Commitment to nature! 

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was a great painter who wanted to re-create but not reproduce, whose aim was not to imitate but to create an autonomous picture that parallels nature. Painting for him is not the servile copying of objects, but the discovery of harmony among numerous relationships.  

In the process of painting, the relationships were pushed further in intensifications of colors, oppositions of form and shape.  He achieved expressive color and form that harmonizes this color with an almost mathematical abstraction.  Much of this would come into his intention of giving full force and variety to local values.  A man, a tree, an apple are not represented but used by Cézanne in building up a painterly thing called "a picture".  He translated the shapes of his subjects into artistic forms which remained fairly close to nature.

Cézanne believed that the painter must devote himself or herself entirely to the study of nature.  "Get to the heart of what is before you and  continue to express yourself as logically as possible.  To achieve progress nature counts, and the eye is trained by contact with her.  It becomes eccentric by looking and working."