Customer Reviews

Cezanne in Provence (Pegasus Library)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the second book I have from the Pegasus Library and I am impressed yet again with the high quality of this book. I love art books, but finding books with high quality images and interesting text is sometimes difficult given my limited price range. This book on Cezanne comes with a commentary which I found better written and more informative than many of the essays found in the huge tomes which seem to dominate the art book world. But every art lover knows the commentary is but a distant concern compared with the quality of the images themselves. The reproductions in this book are bright and clear, crisp enough to see the details, but not unfaithful to the originals. I could go on and on, but I will stop...in short, buy this book!

This book is a fine introduction to this great artist. The reproductions of the paintings are superb. One thing I really like is that although the author supplies many useful (and jargon free) comments and observations about the Cezanne's life and work, the author also lets the artist speak for himself through choice selections of his writings. I understand what Cezanne was doing better now. It makes a good gift book too as it is very accessible and not very long.

This book is well illustrated for the cost of the volume, but it is more of a biography than a book on paintings. It is also well written in readable prose, but the pace of the narrative is broken up by the fact that the illustrations rarely correspond to the place in the text where they are discussed, requiring a fair bit of page flipping. This could have been easily remedied by the publisher. Furthermore, many of the illustrations provided are not discussed at all, or only mentioned in passing. Nevertheless, several key aspects of Cezanne's approach and influence are briefly mentioned, and the text can be enjoyably read in an afternoon. These comments refer to the hardbound edition.