The sage of Aix

Like Mont St-Victoire itself, looming over the country to the north of Aix-en-Provence — seen unexpectedly, then just as suddenly hidden, now clear-cut against the sky, at other times a presence in the corner of the eye— the work of Paul Cézanne has been a landmark in the art of the century and more since his death in Aix in 1906. Unlike Monet, Matisse or Picasso, his influence in his own lifetime was restricted to a small circle of admirers — mostly in the last decade of his life. It is an unusual occurrence for so crucial a figure in the history of painting to have gained a reputation that was almost entirely posthumous.

Before 1906, Cézanne was frequently regarded as a curious minor contributor to the Impressionist movement, in early accounts of which he is referred to only briefly or disparagingly. If Camille Pissarro, in the 1870s, had seen Cézanne as the ‘genius of the future’, it was  only in the wake of Cézanne’s death and in subsequent decades that the truth of the phrase became abundantly apparent.