A once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of works by French post-impressionist artist Paul Cezanne opened Thursday at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London.

The major international exhibition has brought together for the first time over 50 of Cezanne's portraits from collections across the world, including works which have never been on public display in Britain.

Cezanne (1839-1906) is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century. His unique method of building form with color and analytical approach to nature influenced the art of Cubists, Fauvists, and successive generations of avant-garde artists.

Said a spokesperson at the NPG: "Over a working life of some 45 years, Cezanne made almost 1,000 paintings of which around 160 are portraits. The exhibition will offer a unique and fascinating insight into this central aspect of his work, highlighting the special pictorial and thematic characteristics of his portraiture."

Paintings on display range from multiple portraits of himself and his wife, Hortense Fiquet, Cezanne's remarkable portrayals of his Uncle Dominique, dating from the 1860s, through to his final portraits of the gardener Vallier, who helped in his studio at Les Lauves, Aix-en-Provence.

Mark Hudson, art critic of the Daily Telegraph who reviewed the exhibition, said: "The prospect of seeing 50 of Cezanne's portraits (over a quarter of the total) in one place in what is, unbelievably, the first exhibition of such works since 1907 must get the neck hairs prickling of anyone even slightly interested in art.

"Cezanne is perhaps most famous for his paintings of the craggy mass of Mont St Victoire near his home in Provence, works that have become synonymous with the obsessive pursuit of the essence of a single subject. His portraits, if slightly less well known, are no less single-minded, focusing unsparingly on a small number of sitters: his wife, whom he painted 29 times, various relatives, friends and servants and, not least, himself."

Hudson described the impact of three large portraits of Cezanne's wife Hortense in a red dress, all painted in close succession around 1888-90, as quite stunning.

He concluded: "It gives us the most dynamic, penetrating and plain brilliant painting we'll see this year -- which still looks not just fresh, but radical nearly a century and a half after it was created. Show of the year? I do believe so."

The exhibition moves to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, after its visit to the NPG in London which concludes on Feb. 11, 2018.