C�zanne, Paul 1839-1906
French painter, a leading figure of Post-Impressionism and in the development of modern art

C�zanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, the son of a self-made businessman, and seemed destined to follow in his footsteps. From 1859 to 1861 he studied law at Aix, and there formed a friendship with �mile Zola, who persuaded him in 1862 to go to Paris to study art at the Acad�mie Suisse, with a small allowance from his disgruntled father. His passion was for the Romantics, in particular Delacroix, whom he admired all his life. In Paris he met the circle of painters centred on Manet, but his main influence was Camille Pissarro, who brought him into the realm of Impressionism. He worked mainly at Aix and l'Estaque, with occasional visits to Paris, where he exhibited at the first and third Impressionist exhibitions in 1874 and 1877.

C�zanne turned to the study of nature, as in the famous Maison du pendu ('The Suicide's House') of this period (1873, now in the Louvre), and began to use his characteristic glowing colours. In his later period after 1886, when he became financially independent of his father, he emphasized the underlying forms of nature ('the cylinder, the sphere, the cone') by constructing his pictures from a rhythmic series of coloured planes, painting not light but plastic form, and thus becoming the forerunner of Cubism.

In 1886 he married Hortense Fiquet, with whom he had had a secret liaison since 1870. In the same year, his friendship with Zola was ended by the publication of Zola's novel L'?uvre, in which the central figure, an unsuccessful and unbalanced Impressionist painter, is in many respects identifiable as C�zanne.

C�zanne described his aim as being 'to make Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the old masters'. He realized this especially in his many still lifes and landscapes. He achieved recognition only in the last years of his life, and two exhibitions of his work were held by Vollard, in 1895 and 1899.

Among his most famous paintings are The Card Players (1890-92) in the Mus�e d'Orsay, Paris; L'Homme au chapeau de paille (c.1871, 'Man in a Straw Hat'), in the Metropolitan Museum, New York; his self-portrait of 1869, Aix: Paysage rocheux (c.1887, 'Rocky Landscape in Aix') and Le Jardinier (c.1906, 'The Gardener), all in the Tate Gallery, London; and La Vieille au chapelet (c.1897-98, 'The Old Woman with Beads'), in the National Gallery, London.

Bibliography: M Schapiro C�zanne (1988); John Rewald Paul C�zanne (1986); Gersthe Mack Paul C�zanne (1935); R Verdi, C�zanne.