ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art presents “Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection,” a major traveling exhibition organized by the Princeton University Art Museum featuring 50 modern masterworks, many of which are rarely exhibited.

On view Oct. 25, 2014, through Jan. 11, 2015, the exhibition will offer visitors the chance to view exceptional masterpieces by Cézanne, van Gogh, Manet, Modigliani, Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and others.

Featured works showcase the extraordinary vision of Henry Pearlman (1895-1974), a modest American entrepreneur who amassed an astonishing collection of modern art from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including perhaps the greatest collection of watercolors by Cézanne outside of France.

Since 1976, the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection has resided at the Princeton University Art Museum, and this exhibition marks the first international tour of the entire collection since Pearlman’s death in 1974.

“Cézanne and the Modern” features 24 works by Cézanne, including an exceptional set of 16 watercolors. The exhibition also features 26 paintings and sculptures by Degas, Manet, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Oskar Kokoschka, Wilhelm Lembruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley. Highlights include Cézanne’s “Mont Sainte-Victoire” (ca. 1904–06), van Gogh’s “Tarascon Stagecoach” (1888), and Modigliani’s portrait of Jean Cocteau (1916).

The exhibition also includes seven works by Chaïm Soutine, and in conjunction with “Cézanne and the Modern,” the High will present five portraits by the Expressionist painter, generously on loan from the Lewis Collection.

“The High is honored to present these remarkable collections featuring works by many of the most famous artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements,” said Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. director of the High. ”The opportunity to share these treasured, historic works with our visitors is a true joy.”

Over three decades, Pearlman assembled one of the finest collections of European art remaining in private hands. A lifelong New Yorker, Pearlman founded the Eastern Cold Storage Company in 1919, which made important contributions to marine shipbuilding during World War II. He began seriously collecting avant-garde art in the 1940s with the purchase of a canvas by Soutine, an artist known for his bold use of color and expressive brushwork.

Pearlman quickly became interested in Modigliani, another artist of the so-called School of Paris, and eventually began to collect works by some of the artists who influenced them, including Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne.

By building close relationships with a number of dealers in the U.S. and abroad, and befriending artists directly, Pearlman secured numerous paintings that today are deemed masterpieces. He relished the hunt for secreted masterworks and was fascinated by the networks of aesthetic influence and personal relationships among artists.

“Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection” is organized by the Princeton University Art Museum in cooperation with the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation. The exhibition premiered at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, England (March 13–June 22, 2014), then traveled to the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France (July 11–Oct. 5, 2014) before the High Museum of Art (Oct. 25, 2014–Jan. 11, 2015). Following its presentation at the High, the exhibition will be on view at Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (Feb. 7–May 18, 2015), and the tour will culminate at Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, N.J. (Sept. 12, 2015–Jan. 3, 2016).

The exhibition is co-curated by the Princeton University Art Museum’s Betsy Rosasco, research curator of European painting and sculpture, and Laura Giles, Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, curator of prints and drawings.