Biographies of Seurat and Cezanne for Children

Seurat and La Grande Jatte and Paul Cezanne: A Painter's Journey, both by Robert Burleigh, are two excellent additions to works for children on famous painters. The first of these, about Seurat and his most famous painting, begins with an examination of the work itself, asking the reader to seek out details in the painting that might be cursorily overlooked. From there, Burleigh begins to explain these details, account for Seurat's influences, and inform the reader about certain aspects of the painting that I found fascinating. This is a book that invites repeated reading. I particularly liked the way Burleigh folded in small details of Seurat's short life and chose illustrations that coordinated extremely well with the text. The belief that Seurat took his main influence from the painting from ancient Egyptian sculpture with its straight lines of stiff figures in profile makes a huge difference to the viewer. I also liked the way Burleigh included a photograph of the same park from 1999, completely empty of people. In my search for books to use with children, it was rare to come across a book that focused on one work, and I was happy to find this one.
     
The second book, about Cezanne, is less focused, and therefore I found it slightly disappointing when comparing the two, but only in the comparison. As a very nicely illustrated book, this biography of Cezanne includes a wealth of information presented in a highly readable manner. In this, Burleigh writes a more conventional children's biography of Cezanne, with an emphasis on the artist's struggle to create even though he received no encouragement to do so. In fact, even his best friend from childhood, Emile Zola, based a failed artist character on him in his novel, The Masterpiece, with the artist in the book committing suicide when confronted with his ultimate failure. Cezanne was, according to Burleigh, deeply hurt by this portrayal. Determined until the very end of his life to improve and become a better artist, painting every day, Cezanne would have considered admitting failure alien to his very nature.