The man considered the father of modern art would be 172 years old today if he were still alive. Possibly a strange number to celebrate but Google have chosen one of Paul Cézanne’s famous still life paintings for it’s homepage art today, so why not just jump right on that bandwagon.

Of all artists of his time, it is perhaps Cézanne who had the most profound influence on twentieth century art (Matisse admired his use of colour and Picasso developed the flattened structure of Cézanne’s compositions to create the Cubist style.) During his time he was unknown as a painter, had few friends, mistrusted critics and exhibited very rarely. He demonstrated antisocial behaviours such as not washing and refusing to shake hands. Many of his early works were painted with deep pigments and dark tones, reminiscent of romantic and melancholic expressionism of previous generations and reflective of his own self-doubt and depression.Cézanne achieved financial independence not through exhibition or sale of his works, but by inheritance after the death of his banker father in 1886. He remained in relative isolation, but showed an incredible evolution in style around this period. He continued to paint from life but with a new, brilliantly coloured impressionistic style, gradually simplifying the application of paint to the point where he could express volume and shape with just a few touches of colour juxtaposed. Cézanne had discovered a way of representing light and shapes in nature, simply by using colour. He reintroduced structure that impressionists had abandoned.Cezanne had a meticulous obsession with composition, he would use tiny coins to prop up objects in his still life configurations, looking to gain a perfect balance between the objects. He would also move his canvas to paint from different viewpoints, in many ways this paved the way for the upcoming cubist and abstract eras. Cezanne’s use of colour as tone and his obsession with formal elements of composition made it possible for artists who came after to question what they saw and how they represented this on their canvas. By the end of his life Cézanne reduced even his figurative forms to mere representations of themselves. Said Pablo Picasso, “My one and only master . . . Cezanne was like the father of us all”.

You can find a fine archive of Cézanne’s complete works here.