Paul Cézanne’s studio, with a little house and garden, is in the hilly suburb of La Lauves, on what is now called the Avenue Paul Cézanne, just outside the town of Aix-en-Provence. Nearby is a spot that affords a view of his favourite motif: Mont Sainte-Victoire. Cézanne had mostly lived and worked for many years… Read more »
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was a Post-Impressionist painter often recognised as the father of Modern Art and the bridge between the Impressionists and the Cubists.
When Thomas Hardy wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1884 he was forty-four and the themes that were to shape the rest of his life and work had stirred. His closest friend Horace Moule, a brilliant and sensitive man like himself, had committed suicide. It was an appalling loss, for Moule had been at the… Read more »
Everything about Honoré de Balzac was exuberant, uncouth and larger than life. One of the greatest European writers and the founder of the modern novel, he was also a flaneur, treasure hunter, gourmet, political campaigner, businessman, self-publicist, inventor, interior decorator and con man. He participated in his age like a whirling dervish. Coming of age… Read more »