Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902

Paul Cézanne could see this mountain from almost anywhere near his home in Aix-en-Provence, and he painted it more times than he could probably count. The limestone peak of Mont Sainte-Victoire followed him through his whole life, rising on the horizon of southern France. This 1902 version belongs to a stretch of his final years when he kept returning to the same view, working less to record what stood in front of him and more to capture the sensation of being there.

The brushwork here refuses to smooth itself out. Small blocks of blue, green, orange, and ochre sit next to one another like puzzle pieces that never fully lock together. Get close and it reads as a jumble of paint, but back away and the mountain lifts cleanly from the warm fields at its base. Younger artists were struck by this idea of building shapes out of patches of color, and both Picasso and Braque later credited Cézanne with pointing the way toward Cubism.

His nickname, the father of modern painting, comes partly from this stubborn honesty. He was not trying to make the landscape pretty or impressive. He wanted to grasp the solid forms hiding beneath the surface of things, and he chased that goal on the same quiet hillside right up to the end of his life.