The Bellevue Plain

Around 1890, Paul Cézanne set up his easel to capture the plain of Bellevue, a stretch of countryside in the south of France that he adored. This land sat close to his family's property near Aix-en-Provence, and he came back to it over and over. Warm reddish earth spreads across the bottom of the scene, a few rooftops peek out from clusters of trees, and a tall dark cypress rises up like a slender guidepost against the hills and pale blue sky.

Cézanne had his own way of painting, laying down small, chunky brushstrokes that look almost like tiles fitted together. He was not interested in copying every leaf and branch. Instead, he broke the landscape into simple shapes and blocks of color, searching for something more solid underneath the surface of things. That method turned him into a link between the Impressionists before him and the modern painters who came after, including Picasso, who once described Cézanne as "the father of us all." The greens, ochres, and blues hum against each other here, giving this quiet countryside a gentle spark of life.