Book recommendations: Craft with Cezanne

Cezanne is often credited with being a bridge between the dominant style of painting of the late 19th century (Impressionism) and the more modern style of Cubism of the early 20th century. Cezanne wanted to represent real-life in simple forms. He explored using ‘geometric simplification’, and his work was broadly defined as Post-Impressionist. He was a great inspiration to Picasso and Matisse who referred to him as “the father of us all”. We’ve chosen three wonderful books that give a glimpse of this fantastic artist’s career, a career that spanned more than 40 years.

Cezanne painted slowly, believing that he needed to observe and understand his subject matter before he could capture it with a brushstroke. A portrait, for example, might take him over 100 working sessions to complete! Nevertheless, he produced more than 900 oil paintings and 400 watercolours, a prodigious output.