This is the best account of [Cezanne'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 Cezanne. . . 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 Cezanne. . . . reads much like . . . one of Paul Cezanne'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 Cezanne, 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 *
Original, engaging and highly persuasive . . . his prose is witty, mobile and sensitive -- Julian Bell * Guardian *
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 Cezanne, challenging some scholars, affirming others. It repeatedly dazzles . . . the reach of this book is unlikely ever be surpassed in the search for Cezanne. 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 *
Richly documented. . . its rewards are many . . . Danchev's biography has a lightness as it avoids academic jargon and journeys into Cezanne's work with admirers who devoted serious thought to it. -- David D'Arcy * San Francisco Chronicle *
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 *
Enlightening . . . Accomplished and subtle -- Michael Prodger * Mail on Sunday *
It would be virtually impossible for anyone now to get back behind the wrong eyes, and the great strength of Alex Danchev's book is that it doesn't try. This is a biography for an age that takes Cezanne's supreme clarity, balance and pictorial logic for granted. Far from putting him back in the context he came from, it explores his relations with a world he shaped. Its cultural references range from Socrates to Wallace Stevens, Kafka to Beckett, Chaplin to Woody Allen . . . moving -- Hilary Spurling * Daily Telegraph *
A perceptive judge of pictures as well as a skilled narrator, Mr. Danchev excels at dissecting Cezanne's idiosyncratic, analytical approach to the depiction of nature, which eventually paved the way for the innovations of Cubism and modernist abstraction. Abundant color plates and exhaustive documentation round out this magisterial biography. -- Jonathan Lopez * Wall Street Journal *
Triumphant -- Peter Conrad * Observer *
FT Art Books of the Year: The most engrossing biography of an artist that I have read for years. With lightness of touch, depth of thought, a vast cultural hinterland and an assured understanding of painting, Danchev marvellously brings to life Cezanne the man, as well as the pioneering artist called the father of us all by Picasso. -- Jackie Wullschlager * FT *
Marvellous -- Frank Whitford * Sunday Times *
Art Books of Year: Notable among recent studies of arists -- Michael Prodger * Guardian *
A new view of an old subject ... an impressive achievement -- Christian House * Independent on Sunday *
Danchev's parameters are the work, the principles, the life, the art, the viewer, the reader. He writes as if he doesn't really need the century of critics, academics and theorists who have previously explained the painter ... Danchev's self-confidence is evident, and fully justified * TLS *
An enchanting literary exercise... exquisite in style... romantic, intense, affectionate and occasionally wry... a masterpiece. -- Brian Sewell * Evening Standard *
Superb -- Michael Prodger * Standpoint *
Danchev's Cezanne has... virtues of imaginative sympathy, independence of mind, and wide scholarship. He writes as if Cezanne's life and character are as immediately present before him as is the art -- Julian Barnes * TLS *
Engaging and well-researched -- Frederick Brown * LRB *
Magisterial ... Thanks to this wholly engrossing - and liberating - new life of the artist, we are made to feel closer to him than ever before. -- Richard Verdi * Burlington Magazine *
...serious, learned, and far-ranging * Australian Book Review *
