Cezanne's Early Imagery - Softcover

Lewis, Mary Tompkins

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520065638 ISBN 13: 9780520065635

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

The turbulent and problematic work of Paul Cézanne's first decade as a painter has long been overshadowed by his legendary early history. The persona of a brash and intense Romantic that Cézanne created for himself contributed to critical dismissal of his early work as the chaotic and emotional outpouring of an unbridled imagination. Subsequent scholarship, both formalist and psychoanalytical in orientation, has tended to sustain this view, with the result that a unique and powerful body of work has seemed but the murky glimmering before Cézanne's introduction to Impressionism in 1872.

Mary Tompkins Lewis here assesses Cézanne's first works as a whole, with particular emphasis on the subject paintings, and finds them to be stylistically and iconographically coherent. Lewis views the body of early work not as rudimentary efforts giving unschooled shape to the artist's emotions, but as informed and complex reworkings of traditional subjects, styles, and techniques, suffused with the defiant imagination of a burgeoning master.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Tompkins Lewis has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Colgate, and Parsons School of Design. She has lived and studied in Paris and Aix-en-Provence and now lives in New York City. She is a contributor to Cézanne: The Early Years, 1859-1872 (New York, 1988).

From the Back Cover

"An important contribution. The author has drawn on many and extremely diverse sources to support her theories. There is no question in my mind as to the scholarly value of Mary Tompkins Lewis's text and the originality of her approach."―John Rewald

"Mary Tompkins Lewis is a historian of high quality at the top of her form. She is illuminating everything she touches. Dr. Lewis is inaugurating a whole new field in Cézanne studies which promises to extend understanding of the artist."―Lawrence Gowing

From the Inside Flap

"An important contribution. The author has drawn on many and extremely diverse sources to support her theories. There is no question in my mind as to the scholarly value of Mary Tompkins Lewis's text and the originality of her approach."—John Rewald

"Mary Tompkins Lewis is a historian of high quality at the top of her form. She is illuminating everything she touches. Dr. Lewis is inaugurating a whole new field in Cézanne studies which promises to extend understanding of the artist."—Lawrence Gowing

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520065638
• ISBN 13: 9780520065635
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300