Mont Sainte-Victoire, Courtauld

Rising above the plains of Provence, Mont Sainte-Victoire stands as the quiet star of this painting by Paul Cézanne. The artist knew this mountain intimately, having grown up nearby in the south of France, and he came back to it obsessively throughout his career. He painted and sketched it more than sixty times, fascinated by the way its solid shape stayed the same even as the light and seasons kept changing around it. This particular version, made in the late 1880s, is a favorite among the many he created.

A tall pine tree frames the scene, its branches stretching across the top of the canvas like a natural archway that pulls your eye toward the peak in the distance. The valley below is stitched together from green fields, scattered houses, and a slim viaduct threading through the middle. Cézanne did not smooth his colors into one another. Instead he laid down small, careful strokes that stack up like little bricks, giving the whole picture a sense of weight and structure. That way of thinking, where sturdy form counted more than passing detail, opened the door to Cubism and much of modern art. He once described his goal as wanting to "make of Impressionism something solid and lasting," and this steady, grounded view shows just what he was after.