Paul Cezanne was a French artist, a Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cezanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Cezanne's work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognisable. Using planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature, Cezanne's paintings convey intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.

Cezanne's geometric essentialisation of forms was to influence Pablo Picasso's, Georges Braque's and Juan Gris' Cubism in profound ways. When one compares Cezanne's late oils with Cubist paintings, a link of influence is most evident. The key to this link is the depth and concentration that Cezanne applied to recording his observations of nature, a focus later intellectually synthesized in Cubism.

In 1906, Paul Cezanne collapsed while painting outdoors, during a thunderstorm. One week later, on October 22, he died of pneumonia.