Cezanne biography reviews
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Cézanne, a life. By Alex Danchev.
Cezanne biography reviews
488 pp. incl. 86 col. + 47 b.
Cezanne biography reviews and complaints
& w. ills. (Profile Books, London, 2012), £30. ISBN 978–1–84668–165–3.
Reviewed by RICHARD VERDI
Considering his stature and significance, it is surprising that Cézanne has not been the subject of a major biography for more than forty years.
Renoir biography
Admittedly, he was well served with these in the middle years of the last century, when Gerstle Mack, John Rewald, Henri Perruchot and Jack Lindsay provided comprehensive accounts of the artist’s life based on Cézanne’s correspondence, the historical evidence, and the many eulogies and testimonies written by his acolytes and followers, especially during the last decade of his career.
Predictably, all these concluded with the artist’s death in 1906. But, as the exhibition Cézanne and Beyond (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009) reminded us, Cézanne also enjoyed a rich and varied afterlife; and, as Alex Danchev’s magisterial new biography of