From banker to painter - Cezanne and the Impressionists - Harmony in parallel with nature - Still lifes - Mont Saint-Victoire - Latter years.

Since his death 200 years ago, Cézanne has become the most famous painter of the nineteenth century. He was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839 and the happiest period of his life was his early youth in Provence, in company with Emile Zolá, another Italian. Following Zolá’s example, Cézanne went to Paris in his twenty-first year. During the Franco-Prussian war he deserted the military, dividing his time between open-air painting and the studio. He said to Vollard, an art dealer, “I’m only a painter. Parisian wit gives me a pain. Painting nudes on the banks of the Arc [a river near Aix] is all I could ask for.” Encouraged by Renoir, one of the first to appreciate him, he exhibited with the impressionists in 1874 and in 1877. He was received with derision, which deeply hurt him. Cézanne’s ambition, in his own words, was “to make out of Impressionism something as solid and durable as the paintings of the museums.” His aim was to achieve the monumental in a modern language of glowing, vibrating tones. Cézanne wanted to retain the natural colour of an object and to harmonise it with the various influences of light and shade trying to destroy it; to work out a scale of tones expressing the mass and character of the form. Cézanne loved to paint fruit because it afforded him obedient models and he was a slow worker. He did not intend to simply copy an apple. He kept the dominant colour and the character of the fruit, but heightened the emotional appeal of the form by a scheme of rich and concordant tones. In his paintings of still-life he is a master. His fruit and vegetable compositions are truly dramatic; they have the weight, the nobility, the style of immortal forms. No other painter ever brought to a red apple a conviction so heated, sympathy so genuinely spiritual, or an observation so protracted. No other painter of equal ability ever reserved for still-life his strongest impulses. Cézanne restored to painting the pre-eminence of knowledge, the most essential quality to all creative effort. The death of his father in 1886 made him a rich man, but he made no change in his abstemious mode of living. Soon afterwards, Cézanne retired permanently to his estate in Provence. He was probably the loneliest of painters of his day. At times a curious melancholy attacked him, a black hopelessness. He grew more savage and exacting, destroying canvases, throwing them out of his studio into the trees, abandoning them in the fields, and giving them to his son to cut into puzzles, or to the people of Aix. At the beginning of the century, when Vollard arrived in Provence with intentions of buying on speculation all the Cézannes he could get hold of, the peasantry, hearing that a fool from Paris was actually handing out money for old linen, produced from barns a considerable number of still-lifes and landscapes. The old master of Aix was overcome with joy, but recognition came too late. In 1906 he died from a fever contracted while painting in a downpour of rain.

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) is arguably one of the most important artists in the development of modern art, being as he was a key bridge between the stirrings of airy abstraction in Impressionism and the solid redefinition of space espoused by Cubism. Exhibiting with – but often apart – from the Impressionists, always striving to please the establishment and yet ultimately following his own path to find new ways of representing visual experience, his work is suffused with life and colour but also retains its power in the knowledge of its influence. This gorgeous book introduces the reader to Cézanne through an accessible discussion of the artist in context, his life, work and legacy, followed by a curated selection of full-page reproductions of his most representative and impressive work, from his many portraits and still lifes to his figure groups (the iconic bathers) and landscapes (his precious Montagne Sainte-Victoire).

Cezanne painted painted still-lifes and landscapes, portraits and spatial and visual values that influenced the Modernist painters who followed.

This beautifully illustrated book features twenty-four masterpieces in portraiture by celebrated French artist Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), offering an excellent introduction to this important aspect of his work. Arranged chronologically and spanning five decades, featured portraits range from a selection of the artist's self-portraits, made throughout his life, to paintings depicting family and friends, including his uncle Dominique, his wife Hortense, his son Paul, and his final portrait of Vallier, the gardener at his house near Aix-en-Provence, completed shortly before Cézanne's death. Art historian Mary Tompkins Lewis contributes an illuminating essay on Cézanne and his portraiture for general readers, alongside an illustrated chronology of the artist's life and work.

Follows the career of the mid-19th century post-Impressionistic artist, Cezanne, whose work influenced the later Expressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist schools

One girl, one painting a day...can she do it? Linda Patricia Cleary decided to challenge herself with a year long project starting on January 1, 2014. Choose an artist a day and create a piece in tribute to them. It was a fun, challenging, stressful and psychological experience. She learned about technique, art history, different materials and embracing failure. Here are all 365 pieces. Enjoy!