Paul Cézanne

(French, 1839–1906)

Paul Cézanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter credited with launching Modernism with his idiosyncratic style. He depicted form and light with hatched-together brushstrokes of modulated color and bold outlines. Revered by painters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque—who called him the “father of us all”—Cézanne's work was an instrumental force in their attempts at restructuring pictorial space. “We must not paint what we think we see, but what we see,” he once said. “Sometimes it may go against the grain, but this is what our craft demands.” Born on January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France, growing up he was close friends with the esteemed French writer Émile Zola. Cézanne moved to Paris in 1861, where he began his practice of copying the works of Titian and Peter Paul Rubens in the Louvre. While attending drawing classes at the Académie Suisse in Paris, the young Cézanne met his friend and mentor Camille Pissaro, the elder statesman of Impressionism. Supported by his father throughout his career, the artist was able to pursue his interests in painting rather than ascribe to a particular style. During the latter part of his career, Cézanne spent much of his time in his hometown. Here, he painted views of Mont Saint-Victoire, still lifes, and Provençal locals, as seen in his work The Card Players (1890–1892). He was widely appreciated in his lifetime, despite facing mainstream rejection from major institutions and salons. The artist died on October 22, 1906 in Aix-en-Provence, France. Today, Cézanne's works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the National Gallery in London, among others.