Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) spent most of his life in and around his native Aix-en-Provence, though formative years in Paris brought him into the orbit of Pissarro, Monet and Renoir at the Académie Suisse. Trained first in law to satisfy his banker father, he turned to painting against family wishes, working through Romantic and Realist influences before developing a highly personal method: repeated, exploratory brushstrokes and small planes of color built up into dense, structured fields, reworking perspective and the solidity of objects rather than fleeting light effects alone.