Paul Cézanne (Aix-en-Provence, January 19, 1839-Ib., October 22, 1906) was a French post-impressionist painter, considered the father of modern painting and whose works established the foundations of the transition between artistic conception nineteenth-century towards the artistic world of the twentieth century, new and different. However, while he lived, Cézanne was an ignored painter who worked in great isolation. He distrusted critics, had few friends and until 1895 he exhibited only occasionally. He was a "painter's painter", who was ignored by critics and the public, being appreciated only by some impressionists and at the end of his life by the new generation.

Cézanne attempted to achieve an ideal synthesis of naturalistic representation , personal expression and pictorial order . Like Zola with literary realism, Cézanne manifested a progressive interest in the representation of contemporary life, painting the world as it appeared before his eyes , without worrying about thematic idealizations or affectation in style. He strove to develop an authentic observation of the visible world through the most accurate method of representing it in paint that he could find. To this end, he structurally arranged everything he saw into simple shapes and planes of color. His statement "I want to make impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of museums," underlines his desire to unite the observation of nature with the permanence of classical composition . This is also evident with his intention to "revive Poussin from nature" (Vivifier Poussin sur nature).