It is the most exquisite books on the planet.

 Paul Cezanne's art is linked in various and special ways to his

home region, Provence, and with the places and formative experiences of his youth, which he spent near Aix-en-Provence.

There can have been few other painters who have dealt so fully

with the landscape and also the people of Provence.

 There is no longer any question that Paul Cezanne was one of the great artists of our age. Since his death his fame has grown apace.The torn and controversial recluse from Aix-en-Provence has found his place in the history of art. When we now look at his work we may well sense little or nothing of the struggles and suffering that produced it; few artists have created an oeuvre so filled with peace and harmony. He painted still-lifes, landscapes, portraits,and a few large figural compositions, motifs which seem entirely usual components of the classical repertoire Cezanne was so attached to. The critics have been busy on Cezanne; countless studies have dwelt on particular aspects of his art; the art historians have diligently classified and pigeonholed. Yet we know little about the man himself. And an overall approach to the man and his times,his art and his traditions, all taken together, is conspicuous by its absence. The work of his early years has always been an obstacle,those dark and daunting pictures full of violence and unbridled longing. People have preferred Cezanne the great landscape artist, Cezanne the sensitive, portrait painter, Cezanne the genius with colour. Of course that is Cezanne too; but the early works are equally a part of his life and the great art it produced.

Foreword

Cezanne and Provence

The Struggle of Love:

Cezannes Early Work

The Cutting:

Cezannes Breakthrough

Nature, Escapism, and the Eternal Feminine:

Cezanne and Impressionism

Cezanne opts out:

The Crisis of Impressionism

Cezanne and Literature:

Zola, Balzac, Huysmans

Redoing Poussin after Nature:

Cezannes Bathers

The primitive of a new art:

Portraits and Figures

I should like to astonish Paris

with an apple: The Still-Lifes

The Painter and his Mountain:

Late Landscapes and Theories

Paul Cezanne i839- i9o6:

A Chronology