Paul Cezanne has been considered both the most conservative and

the most radical of all the Post-Impressionists. He stated in 1880,

“I intend to make something solid and durable of Impressionism”

and for the rest of his life, he worked constantly to make good

his claim to do so. His paintings had been uniformly rejected by

the conservative Academy and majority of the art world. But by

the end of his life, Cezanne’s art gradually came to be seen as

the work of a most original genius who in the most important

ways, announced the art of the future. Even Pablo Picasso called

him, “the father of all of us.” We will examine the highlights of

his oeuvre and evaluate just how conservative and simultaneously

radical he really was.