Paul Cézanne is widely acknowledged to be the ‘father’ of Modern Art. Far from Paris, in the South of France, his obstinacy as man and artist made him a pioneer of a new way of seeing. Returning always to the same subjets – the Mont Sainte-Victoire, bathing figures, or still lifes – he abandoned central perspective, distorted body-shapes and broke all the traditional rules of landscape painting.

This fascinating film examines many of Cézanne’s works in detail and draws on the observations of a wide range of historians and commentators, including artists Howard Hodgkin, R. B. Kitaj and Bridget Riley, critic John Golding and the artist’s grand-daughter, Aline Cézanne. Location filming in and around Cézanne’s home town of Aix-en-Provence, and archive photographs are also used to illustrate this study of Cézanne’s life and work.