About this ebook
“In this biography, admirable from beginning to end, Paul Cézanne is at last brought convincingly to life... Gerstle Mack has produced a full-length portrait [...] likely to prove, all in all, the most sympathetic, unbiased and complete picture of the extraordinary ‘hermit of Aix’ that we shall ever have... to read Mr. Mack’s beautifully coordinated narrative is sheer pleasure... With what amounts virtually to a novelist’s grasp of the whole situation, Mr. Mack causes Cézanne’s friends — those who played in any measure a significant part in his life — to come alive along with him... Gerstle Mack, in preparing this exceptionally fine biography of Cézanne, has assembled the existing material, weighed it with discriminating judgment, and woven the strands together to form a portrait that seems irradiated with truth...the life of Paul Cézanne as reconstructed by Mr. Mack is extraordinarily full and satisfying. It is a deft, engrossing, revelatory piece of work.” — Edward Arden Jewell, The New York Times(October 13, 1935)
“The best biography [of Paul Cézanne] in English.” — John Rewald, The History of Impressionism
“A thorough, dependable biography... It will remain the one indispensable source for those who undertake to interpret the modern master.” — The Nation
“[Gerstle Mack] gives an excellent account of the impressionist movement... while his discussion of Cézanne’s painting is always lucid.” — London Times Literary Supplement
“Mr. Mack’s chief reward is likely to come in finding that his work has set a date in our understanding of Cézanne’s real part in the history of modern painting.” — The New Republic
“Definitive life of the painter who probably influenced modern art more than any man of his time... An important book for anyone interested in the history of art.” — Kirkus Reviews
About the author
Born in San Francisco, Gerstle Mack (1894-1983) studied architecture at UC-Berkeley before switching to MIT where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1916. He worked as an architectural draftsman in New York until World War I. After serving in the War in Paris as a Lieutenant in the US Reserve Corps of Engineers, he returned to San Francisco to do architectural work and theater design production. In 1926 he left his architecture work to travel to Spain where he made architectural measurements and produced a book on southern Spanish architecture in 1928. A companion volume for northern Spanish architecture appeared in 1930.
Mack did extensive archival research in France, England and the United States on Paul Cézanne before publishing a highly praised biography of the painter in 1935. He followed this with a biography of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1938, which was equally well received. During World War II, Mack served in the military in England with the Office of Strategic Services. The Land Divided, his history of the Panama Canal, was published in 1944 and his biography of Gustave Courbet appeared in 1951. In 1981, he wrote a book on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which he personally survived. Manhattan has been Mack’s home since 1938, but he travelled extensively across the world.
