One can’t appreciate 20th century art without understanding the significance and genius of Paul Cézanne. Featuring interviews with curators and experts from the National Portrait Gallery London, MoMA New York, National Gallery of Art Washington, and Musée d’Orsay Paris, and correspondence from the artist himself, the film takes audiences beyond the exhibition to the places Cézanne lived and worked and sheds light on an artist who is perhaps the least known of all the impressionists – until now.

"Paul Cézanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation and influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century. Late one day in the early 1870s, Cézanne was at a café shaking hands with a crowd of talkative artists. When he came upon Éduoard Manet he instead tipped his hat declaring “I won’t shake your hand, sir, as I have not washed in 8 days”. It was a wonderful mix of arrogance and humour, simultaneously respectful yet insolent. And it gives a glimpse into the wonderfully rounded, often misunderstood, character of one of the great
19th and early 20th-century artists: Paul Cézanne. As much as we love to explore artists from across a vast spectrum of history and geography, one does find oneself coming back time again to that extraordinarily fruitful period in France at the end of the 19th-century: Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Matisse, Morisot, Cassatt, Whistler... and, most certainly, Paul Cézanne, the man Picasso famously called “the father of us all.” We waited for a major exhibition to come along that seemed ambitious enough, comprehensive enough, thoughtful enough, for us to make a film about. When the director of London’s National Portrait Gallery announced they were doing a show - with Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC - I knew the moment had arrived. I love making biographies and so a Cézanne show that was based on his portraiture was ideal, if a little unconventional. Here one meets the individuals who populated his life. With them are more than three dozen self-portraits which (Rembrandt excepted) is an uncommonly large
number for an artist.
There was nothing new about an artist painting a self-portrait. But something happens in the 19th century – maybe it reflects the changing status of artists or maybe it is something about the new era of self-absorbtion, self-criticism and self-analysis that developed as the 19th headed towards the 20th century. Whatever the motivation, this film demonstrates how Cézanne left behind a life story in paint." Phil Grabsky, Director

[Not Available in Italy, Spain & Poland]