Cézanne and Impressionism

A painting of a road leading through a town. Structures are visible in the right middle and background, and trees in the left middle and foreground. The brushwork is loose and the colors vibrant.

Paul Cézanne, The House of Dr. Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise, 1872–73. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Collection of Mary C. and James W. Fosburgh, B.A. 1933, M.A. 1935 

Cézanne arrived in Paris as an educated 22 year old from a well-to-do family in Aix-en-Provence, passionate about art, with an erratic, contrary temperament. There, he was privately taught, having arrived just as his contemporaries (later called “Impressionists”) Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, and Claude Monet were trying unsuccessfully to be accepted by the official Salon juries. Cézanne went his own way, scornful of Modernist convention. He studied older art in the Musée du Louvre; his heroes were nonconformist artists of the previous generation, chiefly Gustave Courbet and Eugène Delacroix. The kindly Camille Pissarro attracted him to the suburban countryside and to painting out of doors. During the 1870s, Cézanne developed his distinctive kind of Impressionism, applying it to still life and portraiture as well as landscape.  

Generously sponsored by the Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund and the John Walsh Lecture and Education Fund.

Attend In Person or on Zoom


Attend in person in the Gallery’s Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Lecture Hall or virtually on Zoom. No registration required for in-person attendance. The doors to the lecture hall open at 12:30 pm. Space is limited. 

Registration required for virtual attendance. On Zoom, closed captions will be available in English. All lectures will be filmed and archived to the Gallery’s YouTube channel

About Cézanne’s People, Places, and Things

In this three-part lecture series, John Walsh, B.A. 1961, Director Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, considers the work of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). 

Learn more about the series