The great Neo-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne spent most of his life working in the beautiful surroundings of Aix-en-Provence, where he was born in 1839. Today, the Jas de Bouffan, the Bibemus quarry, the Chateau-Noir, the Mont Sainte-Victoire, and the Estaque are all famous as motifs in the master's most triumphant works. The settings are more than mere sceneries, encapsulating Cézanne's belief that the essence of nature is first and foremost revealed by color. Only rarely has a landscape been so perfectly linked with an artist; this superb book uncovers this connection, and how it gave birth to a new pictorial style.

Denis Coutagne has been the director of the Musee Granet, in Aix-en-Provence, since 1980. Starting with the museum's first Cezanne exhibition, in 1982, he has strove to "rehabilitate" Cezanne in his hometown ever since. A commemorative exhibition (co-sponsored by the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.), "Cezanne in Provence," will take place at the renovated Musee Granet in 2006.