Cezanne's composition: the first look at how it works

Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire. 65 x 81 cm. c. 1890.

Paul Cezanne is often called "the father of modern painting", and that's true in so many senses that it almost becomes false: it's a father who would probably never acknowledge most of his "children". What I mean is that (I believe) Cezanne achieved a new kind of synthesis between different aspects and elements of painting, and his various "descendants" took this fragile whole apart, running away with one or another part of it (and often making it into an all too easy "recipe" for painting-making). So, for example, Cubism (especially the analytical cubism) evidently descends from Cezanne's achievements, but it's very much debatable whether Cezanne himself would have accepted its flat planes without colour modulations as a painting (as we know, he intensely disliked even Gauguin's flat shapes). 

What I want to do is go back to the original synthesis, to try and understand how this all works together in composing a painting. As of now, I am planning a two-months series of (weekly) posts on Cezanne's composition (to be completed before my two-weeks vacation in September), but it may be continued later.