Paul Cezanne’s ‘The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan’ painted

Paul Cezanne’s ‘The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan’ painted in around 1875. Things changed slowly in Britain at the end of the 19th century, attitudes and influences permeated rather than revolutionised art movements. Whilst the French had taken Constable and Turner and invented impressionism, the English were saturating their stylistic artworks in the honey of Edwardian idealism. In 1909 Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry went to Paris, viewing the works of Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso; bringing back with them a new modernism that would contribute to a change in established British art. Between Constable and Bloomsbury a whole era of English art, important as it is in reflecting our culture at the time, seemed more about glory and very little about truth. Cezanne, in simple ways expunged this ‘fake reality’ and offered truth to those in Bloomsbury that sought to pursue honesty in everything they created.