Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne’s development of a new language of painting has led many to call him the father of Modernism. While his early work drew on the rich tonalities of Delacroix, by the 1870s Pissarro had encouraged Cézanne to paint outdoors using a brighter palette - Bathers (1874-5) was the result. However, unlike the Impressionists, his interest lay not in fleeting light effects, but rather in underlying structure. His still-lifes of the 1870s were made via his technique of ‘contructive brustrokes’. Form was depicted not through light and shadow, but rather planes of colour. He also broke with the tradition of single-point perspective through the use of distortions. The 1880s saw Cézanne focus on the landscapes around Aix-en-Provence, especially Mont Sainte-Victoire. Recognition came in 1895 when Ambroise Vollard held a one-man show of his work. In the decades that followed, his influence upon Avant-Garde painters was unmatched.