Banks of the Seine at Médan

Paul Cézanne set up along the Seine at Médan to paint this river view, drawn there by his old friend the writer Émile Zola, who owned a country home nearby. The two had known each other since boyhood, and Cézanne found the spot ideal for quiet hours of work. Across the water sit a cluster of houses half hidden by trees, a low stone wall running through the fields, and a big leafy mass of green filling the upper right. The river gathers all of it up and tosses it back in shimmering, loosely painted reflections.

Rather than blending his colors into smooth shapes, Cézanne laid them down in small square strokes, like tiles fitted together to form the land, the sky, and the water. This blocky, patient method was unusual for the late 1800s and turned out to matter enormously for the artists who followed. Painters like Picasso studied Cézanne closely, and you can trace a line from these stacked brushstrokes straight to the beginnings of Cubism. What comes across, though, is simply a warm and easygoing afternoon by the water, built with real care from the ground up.