Though attracted by the more radical art forms in Paris, admiring the innovating works by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, he destroyed many canvases during depressive moments and returned home full of self-doubt. A year spent working with his father, however, convinced him to try a painter's life again. Cezanne's early works were dark and composed of heavy fluid pigment suggesting the moody romantic expression of previous generations. Cezanne returned to Paris suffering a new defeat when failing the entrance exam for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Worse, his paintings were rejected by the Salon. Thanks to Pissarro he was introduced to the Impressionist painters such as Manet and Degas.

Although he seemed less technically accomplished than the other impressionists, Cézanne was accepted by the group and exhibited with them in 1874 and 1877. In general the impressionists did not have much commercial success, and Cézanne's works received the harshest critical commentary. He drifted away from many of his Parisian contacts during the late 1870s and '80s and spent much of his time in his native Aix. After 1882, he did not work closely again with Pissarro and in 1886, Cézanne became embittered over what he took to be thinly disguised references to his own failures in one of Zola's novels, as a result he broke off relations with his oldest supporter. In the same year he inherited his father's wealth and finally, at the age of 47, became financially independent, but socially he remained quite isolated.

For many years Cézanne was known only to his old impressionist colleagues and to a few younger radical postimpressionist artists, including the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gauguin In 1895, however, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, arranged a show of Cézanne's works and over the next few years promoted them successfully. By 1904, Cézanne was featured in a major official exhibition, and by the time of his death (in Aix on October 22, 1906) he had attained the status of a legendary figure. During his last years many younger artists travelled to Aix to observe him at work and to receive any words of wisdom he might offer. Both his style and his theory remained mysterious and cryptic; he seemed to some a naive primitive, while to others he was a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his colour, coupled with the apparent rigor of his compositional organization, signalled to most that despite the artist's own frequent despair, he had synthesized the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner. See a Video excerpt about Cezanne (Windows media player needed)
 

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