Cézanne and The Eternal Feminine

Cézanne's painting The Eternal Feminine, painted in 1878, has been given considerable attention in the literature on this artist, though it has generally embarrassed scholars because it suggests aspects of the artist's personality that many connoisseurs in the past would rather have repressed. The painting has been known by a variety of titles and, as Wayne Andersen has discovered, has also been altered. He traced these alterations to an art dealer who made them in an effort to render the painting more marketable. This volume is the first to interrogate the original state of The Eternal Feminine and to resolve its mysterious importance to Cézanne and, more broadly, the history of art. Devoting a separate chapter to each of the titles by which the picture has been known, Andersen resolves its hidden meaning while providing a fresh look at Cézanne's artistic process.

"A fresh and suggestive approach to rereading the history of modern painting through the lens of gender." -- Bookforum, "An eminently readable and thought-provoking book about much, much more than just the painting reproduced on its dust-jacket." H-FRANCE, "As a treasure trove of myths and images reflecting prurient male sexuality in high art, this study richly records a facet of nineteenth-century French cultural history." - Laurence M. Porter, Michigan State University

Wayne Andersen is Professor Emeritus of History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of a number of volumes on aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century art, most recently Picasso's Brothel: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and The Youth of Cézanne and Zola.