Paul Cézanne

French painter, one of the greatest of the Postimpressionists, whose works and ideas were influential in the aesthetic development of many 20th-century artists and art movements, especially Cubism. Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, in the South of France, as the son of a wealthy banker. As such, his parents convinced him to study law. In the mid-1860s, following several trips to Paris, he met the Impressionist artists Degas, Renoir, Monet and Manet. Later he would come into contact with Camille Pissarro cementing his ties with these revolutionary painters and eschew a more traditional profession. Cézanne included examples of his work with the Impressionists in their first and third exhibition in 1874 and 1878, respectively. Later, he would settle in Aix at his parents' estate where he would break away from the tenets of Impressionism.