In this authoritative and up-to-date study of the painter widely regarded as the father of modern art, Richard Verdi traces the evolution of Cezanne's landscape, still-life and figure compositions, from the turbulently romantic creations of his youth to the visionary masterpieces of his final years. The background of the painter's fluctuating reputation and strained relations with his parents, wife, and close friend Emile Zola, is vividly evoked using excerpts from his own letters and from contemporary accounts of the artist. Concerned both to master the themes of the past, through his copying sessions in Louvre, and to explore the eternal qualities of nature in the countryside of his native Provence, Cezanne sought "to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums." "In the tradition of Roger Fry." --The New York Review of Books. 182 illus., 33 in color.