Paul Cézanne, the only son of a self-made financier and overbearing father, grew up in the quiet, tree-shaded town of Aix-en-Provence, an old provincial capital of southern France some 15 miles inland from Marseilles. His father was determined to groom young Paul for a position in the family bank at Aix. It was a childhood of emotional tension and only at the age of 22, did he finally cajole his reluctant father into letting him give up the law and go to Paris to study Art. He then left his father's newly-acquired mansion and 37 acre estate near Aix called, The Jas de Bouffan, and sent to Paris, at the urging of his boyhood classmate and friend, Emile Zöla.

From the late 1870's to the early 1890's, Cézanne moved with a restless, fugitive persistence from one residence to another in Provence and in and around Paris. He lived in constant dread that his father would discover his young family. In spite of the turmoil, it as the Jas de Bouffan, this privileged place, this protected space, that Paul Cézanne was to find a favourable climate to work; among the 300+ canvases he painted, are most of the paintings that affected the early course of 20th Century Art.

When his parents had both passed away, and Jas de Bouffan was sold, Cézanne had his own studio built on Les Lauves hill from plans he drew, just five years prior to his own death. This studio was the creative home of a "new art" of which Cézanne called himself the 'primitive'. Even today it retains the character that this painter wanted to give it and is, above all, the workplace where so many more masterpieces were composed and where the visitor discovers, with emotion, those very objects, often humble, but somehow precious, that have become so indissociable from the work of Cézanne, particularly from his still lifes. Mark King, once again, masterfully synthesizes the significant historical totality of Les Lauves through his expert use of a subdued palette which produces a painting of diffused radiance, so that we may quietly visit the studio and feel the footsteps of Cézanne.