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Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and was counted one of them; yet in a profound sense he was the first of the Post-Impressionists.

While he was classed with the Impressionists he had little in common with them, practically nothing in common with Monet.

All his life Monet has been busy with the surface of things; all his life Cézanne was busy with the substance of things.

When Monet paints a landscape he paints the grass and the flowers and the trees one sees bathed in sunlight; when Cézanne painted a landscape it was an elemental presentment of nature herself.

Cézanne was born in Aix in 1839 and died in the same place in 1905.

Having inherited just sufficient to live very modestly, he devoted his entire life to trying to fathom the secrets of nature and paint her innermost truths.

The fact that his pictures did not sell, that even his friends did not understand him, did not swerve him a hair’s breadth from the path he had chosen—to paint, to learn how to paint, simpler and truer interpretations.