The Letters of Paul Cezanne

Book of the Year, Apollo Magazine, 2013

Revered and misunderstood by his peers and lauded by later generations as the father of modern art, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) has long been a subject of fascination for artists and art lovers, writers, poets, and philosophers. His life was a ceaseless artistic quest, and he channeled much of his wide-ranging intellect and ferocious wit into his letters. Punctuated by exasperated theorizing and philosophical reflection, outbursts of creative ecstasy and melancholic confession, the artist’s correspondence reveals both the heroic and all-toohuman qualities of a man who is indisputably among the pantheon of all-time greats.

This new translation of Cezanne’s letters includes more than twenty that were previously unpublished and reproduces the sketches and caricatures with which Cezanne occasionally illustrated his words. The letters shed light on some of the key artistic relationships of the modern period–about one third of Cezanne’s more than 250 letters are to his boyhood companion Emile Zola, and he communicated extensively with Camille Pissarro and the dealer Ambroise Vollard. The translation is richly annotated with explanatory notes, and, for the first time, the letters are cross-referenced to the current catalogue raisonne. Numerous inaccuracies and archaisms in the previous English edition of the letters are corrected, and many intriguing passages that were unaccountably omitted have been restored. The result is a publishing landmark that ably conveys Cezanne’s intricacy of expression.