This book gathers the commentary of people who knew the painter Paul Cezanne, especially in his later years. Now seen as one of the most influential of modern painters, in his 40s he returned to his village of Aix-en-Provence where, he worked in near obscurity and with great dedication until his death in 1906.

"More than any other artist in the Impressionist group, Degas was fascinated by ideas and consciously based his work on them. "What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters," he once confessed, "of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament I know nothing." Yet his work has been understood very inadequately from that point of view. Publications on him, once dominated by memoirs inspired by his remarkable personality, are now concerned with cataloguing and studying limited aspects of his complex art. Its intellectual power and originality, which were evident to contemporary writers like Duranty and Valery, have not been studied sufficiently by more recent critics. It is this side of Degas's art--as seen in his ingenious pictorial strategies and technical innovations, his use of motifs like the window, the mirror, and the picture within the picture, his invention of striking, psychologically compelling compositions, and his creation of a sculptural idiom at once formal and vernacular--that is the subject of these essays. Inevitably, given the range of his intellectual interests, the essays are also concerned with his contacts with leading novelists and poets of his time and his efforts to illustrate or draw inspiration from their works. Throughout, the author makes use of an important, largely unpublished source, the material in Degas's notebooks, on which he has recently published a complete catalogue"--Publisher's description.

DEGAS BY HIMSELF is a milestone in published approaches to the work of this remarkable figure. No other book has illustrated so many of Degas' works in colour, including his best-known paintings and sketches, as well as many works that will be unfamiliar to most people. The book draws on a range of sources - the artist's own notebooks and letters, as well as anecdotes and memoirs from his intimate circle - to trace a vivid portrait of Degas and reveal intimate aspects of his life and personality. His notebooks and letters show him as a forceful and expressive writer; there are letters to friends and customers, urgent messages to exhibitors at the Impressionist exhibition and, finally, a number of short and sad letters from his last years. Degas was also known as a wit and conversationalist, provoking a number of his friends to write down his words for posterity. For the first time, reminiscences and reported remarks have been brought together, conjuring up an unexpected picture of the artist as a man of wisdom and good humour.