Cézanne: A life - Tapa dura

This is the best account of [Cézanne's] astonishing career and Danchev responds to the challenge with great sensitivity and genuine brio. This is a book which will survive the test of time. (John Golding CBE, Emeritus Professor of the Royal Academy)

A brave new life of Cézanne. . . Danchev's masterstroke is to use literature rather than art as his point of entry . . . Adds an important tranche of material to the Cezanne biography . . . much of this new material successfully illuminates Cezanne's inner life. An important book. (Waldemar Januszczak Sunday Times)

This is a great book - possibly the best - on one of the most respected impressionists. (Bookseller)

Alex Danchev compellingly guides us through Paul Cezanne's much mythologized life from his over-bearing father and early days in the South, as a school friend of Emile Zola, to his position as one of the revered creators of modern painting. The development of Cezanne's thinking and the construction of his paintings are explored alongside his complex relationship with other painters and the Parisian art establishment. Danchev has a great ability to weave his research and analysis into a compelling narrative: understanding what was required for Cezanne to make art modern. (Sandy Nairne, National Portrait Gallery)

A fantastically multidimensional Cézanne. . . . reads much like . . . one of Paul Cézanne's paintings . . . Mr. Danchev's portrait of Cezanne's life is heavy, thick with deceptively simple detail, and unendingly rich in offering context and detail for the reader to make sense of what contexts surrounded Cézanne, how Cezanne understood himself, and how the surrounding artistic milieu and climate informed Cezanne's paintings . . . Cezanne, A Life is a compelling and well-written biography of an enduring, enigmatic and complex figure in the changing world of turn-of-the-20th-century modernist art. (Dr Lydia Pyne New York Journal of Books 2012-10-16)

Original, engaging and highly persuasive . . . his prose is witty, mobile and sensitive (Julian Bell Guardian 2012-10-20)

Danchev introduces a fresh tone into the debates about this artist . . . a stimulating tapestry of ideas . . . More ambitious, more brilliant and more discursive, it has a lively, consistently interrogative authorial voice; it draws upon a rich hinterland of cultural knowledge; it makes interventions into the massive historiography on Cézanne, challenging some scholars, affirming others. It repeatedly dazzles . . . the reach of this book is unlikely ever be surpassed in the search for Cézanne. Danchev is not only a formidable historian; he is also closely attentive to the dynamics in any relationship . . . This book, which makes a major contribution to our understanding of this haunting figure, is enhanced by three fat wads of colour reproductions and made more seductive by the photographs of artists that infiltrate the text. (Frances Spalding Independent 2012-10-27)

Richly documented. . . its rewards are many . . . Danchev's biography has a lightness as it avoids academic jargon and journeys into Cézanne's work with admirers who devoted serious thought to it. (David D'Arcy San Francisco Chronicle 2012-11-05)

Mr Danchev's exhaustive research, not least of Zola's novels, provides a much fuller explanation of the man, which helps elucidate the art . . . many will be enthralled, inspired and perhaps even comforted by this book (John McEwan Country Life 2012-11-14)

Enlightening . . . Accomplished and subtle (Michael Prodger Mail on Sunday 2012-11-18)