Hence the intellectual nature of his many drawings of sculpture

Hence the intellectual nature of his many drawings of sculpture. He used drawing to think - even when portraying his son, who was the delight of his life.ROOM FOUR: LANDSCAPES, LATE 1870s TO THE MID-1880sFrom about 1876 Cezanne regularly painted at sites in the Paris region, at the Jas de Bouffan (his father's house at Aix), and at L'Estaque, a small coastal town near Marseilles. In the early 1880s he made the first of his paintings of the Mont Saint-Victoire, perhaps the most familiar of all his motifs. There is no doubt that Cezanne had strong feelings about his Provencal homeland He also had relentless aesthetic determination Take The Pool at the Jas de Bouffan. All the facts of nature are made obedient to a pictorial vision. Cezanne recorded what he saw in front of him, but rightness on the canvas was paramount.In order to satisfy his need for painterly structure Cezanne developed not just the architecture of his paintings but his famous "constructive brush stroke". Dabs and marks of paint, sometimes in parallel hatchings and sometimes leaning in unexpected ways, both record distant space and also insist on their tactile nature as movements of the brush on a flat surface.

Consider the heated but luxuriant use of paint in The Bay of L'Estaque From the East, the repetitions of Rocks at L'Estaque, or the beautiful restraint of Turn in the Road, and it becomes clear that Cezanne's application was not merely "constructive" but immensely varied. He used the landscape genre as a vessel in which to pour all possible uses of the brush. All the pictures in this room are consummate.ROOM FIVE: 1880s-1890sLike some Old Master mythological scenes, Bather With Outstretched Arms and the Large Bather appear to belong to a realm beyond human contemplation. Nobody knows what they mean, but it is fair to speculate that Cezanne was thinking of his own adolescence, when he first sensed the power that he would bring to the world. Similar mystic paintings about adolescence come from the hands of Cezanne's "children", Matisse and Picasso.In this room there is a Picassoesque portrait of a thoughtful youth, Cezanne's beloved son. We do not have much information about Cezanne's feelings towards his wife - we do know that her life was not an easy one - yet Cezanne returned to her features time and again. Madame Cezanne with Unbound Hair is a grave acknowledgement that Hortense's time on earth was ruled by her husband's meditations.

Cezanne makes his art from her sadness.ROOM SIX: PORTRAITS AND LANDSCAPES IN THE 1890sHere's Paul Cezanne again, in the rather odd Boy Resting. As ever, it turns out that there is justice behind Cezanne's awkwardness. This is a room about the beauty of Provencal nature and the complete independence of the artist's approach. Now more at ease financially, Cezanne moved between the Jas de Bouffan, an apartment in Aix and two important bases in the countryside, a house at the quarry of Bibemus and a room in the Chateau Noir, in thickly wooded country outside Aix. These places are recorded in Mont Saint-Victoire Seen from Bibemus and the mysterious Chateau Noir. Some commentators find an even greater density in work of this period and a proud retreat from his times. Certainly he was most affected by the boulders and red rocks, the pine trees and hillsides of his lonely environment; but one painting, as beautifully pungent as any in his career, was done in Switzerland.

This is the Lac d'Annecy, a marvellous examination not so much of the lake as of the nature of blue and green.ROOM SEVEN: LATE PORTRAITSCezanne was a painter who required the living presence of his subjects. Ambroise Vollard took some 150 sessions before Cezanne felt that the portrait was completed. In this room are more pictures of Mme Cezanne, of neighbours and of the gardener: Cezanne painted people who were around him. Socially, therefore, there is a similarity with the democratic portraiture of Van Gogh. Yet how dissimilar they were in attitude - Van Gogh all impetuosity, Cezanne meditative and more truly concerned with the mortal.ROOM EIGHT: DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURSThe second room of works on paper and the correct place to admire Cezanne's watercolours He was one of the masters of the medium. Alas, his colours have often faded and his paper yellowed with age.