Open Cezanne

The self-painted fellow above is hero number 146, and his name is Paul Cezanne born this day 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France. His father was the co-founder of a bank, and was financially secure allowing for Cezanne to have a fairly secure life, and to come into a large inheritance. No "starving artist" was he. At the age of 16, he entered the College Bourbon, where he met and became BFF with Emile Zola. He stayed there for six years, and then began, per his father's wishes, began studying law at the University of Aix. In 1861, against his father's wishes, he moved to Paris to become an artist partially on the advice of his friend Zola. Eventually his father got on board with his son the artist idea, and Cezanne later received an inheritance of 400,000 francs from the old man, which pretty much set him up for life. Of course that wasn't till later, and he did have some up and downs along the way. In 1888 he broke off his friendship with Zola after Zola modeled the main character in Zola's book "The Masterpiece" on Cezanne. He acquired a mistress of which his father did not approve, and there was a threat or two of being cut off financially, but it never happened. He eventually married the mistress, and had a son, but the marriage was a stormy one, and Cezanne cut her out of his will, and moved off to an isolated studio where all he had to do was paint. And paint he did, and paint he could there is a quote attributed to both Picasso, and Matisse that Cezanne was "the father of us all." High praise there, and so for being the father of us all, and painting some damn fine painting, Paul Cezanne (January 19th, 1839- October 22nd, 1906, at the age 67), you are my hero of the day.