Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne (1839 - 1906) painted almost 200 portraits, including twenty-six of himself and twenty-nine of his wife. This book presents twenty-four 'highlights' from a major international exhibition exploring the portraiture of this remarkable artist, whom both Matisse and Picasso called 'the father of us all'.

By bringing together a broad selection of Cézanne's portraits, the book reveals arguably the most personal, and therefore most human, aspect of his art, and one that has hitherto received surprisingly little attention. The portraits range from the artist's earliest surviving self-portrait, dating from the 1860s, through portraits of his uncle Dominique, his wife Hortense, his son Paul, and a range of friends and associates, to his final portrait of Vallier, the gardener at his house near Aix-en-Provence, made shortly before the artist's death in 1906.

The art historian Mary Tompkins Lewis, author of Cézanne: Art and Ideas (2000) and Cézanne's Early Imagery (1989), contributes an illuminating introductory essay on the artist and his portraiture for a general readership. Also included is an illustrated chronology of Cézanne's life and work.