In the Post-Impressionist pantheon, the French painter Paul Cézanne is first among equals. Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin certainly have more compelling biographies, and Georges Seurat—of Sunday in the Park with George fame—has been played on Broadway by the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal. But Cézanne’s newfangled fracturing of old-fashioned still lifes and landscapes became the very motor of modernism. Indispensable to figures as diverse as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, not to mention Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, Cézanne (1839–1906) can still reliably mesmerize. And with a substantial portion of his works in private hands, he can still surprise. READ ON