Born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839, Paul Cézanne has been termed the father of modern art. Cézanne was probably the greatest single influence on the art of the twentieth century, inspiring post-impressionism artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gaugain and Henri Matisse. Throughout his lifetime, Cézanne strove to develop an ideal composition of naturalistic representation, personal expression, and solidity of form. His planar compositional structure influenced the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and laid the basis for the development of the radical cubist style.

Cézanne developed artistic interests at an early age, and in 1862 he joined his childhood companion, the writer Emile Zola, in Paris to study from the masters of the past. Cézanne particularly admired the artists Rubens and Delacroix, whose paintings greatly influenced his early work. Dark, earthy tones applied with heavy, fluid pigment dominated his earliest paintings, mirroring the romantic expressionism of...