Writing in 1917, the American critic Henry McBride could proclaim in his review of an exhibition at the Arden Gallery in New York that Cézanne was now “in the most exalted ranks.” John Rewald’s new book, Cézanne and America, recounts just how Cézanne came to achieve that position in this country. It should be said from the start—and make no mistake about it—Cézanne in America is an exemplary book, a signal event in American art history with far-reaching implications for the field. It brings alive the long struggle to secure modernism here, from which Cézanne emerged, as McBride termed him, the “most potent influence on the art of his time.” Year by year, we relive that struggle, and in so doing we learn a staggering amount about American art, much of which has been only dimly or incompletely understood, if at all, until the publication of this book. It makes us consider the very basis of Cézanne and his art and why that art today remains as demanding and compelling as ever. We ponder once again why it is that we submerge ourselves in Cézanne as we do in few other artists. John Rewald published his first article on Cézanne in 1936, more than fifty years ago, and his lifetime of research and experience stands behind every page of Cézanne and America.

The book is based on the 1979 A. W. Mellon Lectures given at the National Gallery of Art and is published by Princeton