Paul Cézanne, Carl O. Schniewind: A Cézanne Sketchbook. Figures, Portraits, Landscapes and Still Lifes

Outwardly, the sketchbook reproduced here was quite an ordinary one. With its oil paint-spotted cover and water stains, it was part of a group of five Cézanne sketchbooks arriving in the United States in late 1950, known collectively as "The Lyon Sketch Books." But within, its pages comprise an extraordinary document — a unique and revealing view of Paul Cézanne, developing, master painter, precursor of Cubism, revolutionary spirit. In this intimate and informal record, one of the towering figures of 19th-centuray art experiments with tonal effects, light, mars and other qualities in over 100 black-and-white drawings: self-portraits, sketches of his wife and son (no less than 29 views of the youth), landscapes, figure studies, profiles, a series of bathers. With equal intensity of observation, Cézanne studies the base of a lamp, a glass carafe, a sugar bowl. Here, too, mingled with the master's drawings, arc the scribblings of his young son, grocery lists, and other personal minutiae that add an especially human dimension to the work.