The Farm at the Jas de Bouffan

Paul Cézanne painted this warm view of the farmhouse at the Jas de Bouffan around 1885, capturing a place he knew better than almost any other. His father, a wealthy banker, bought the country estate near Aix-en-Provence in 1859, and the family held onto it for nearly forty years. Cézanne came back to it constantly, painting its buildings, trees, and gardens from every direction. More than a family home, the property became a kind of open-air workshop where he tested his ideas about color and form.

The ochre walls of the house catch the southern sun and glow against a bright blue sky, while the green lawn in the foreground sits heavy and firm below. Cézanne built the whole scene from small patches of color, laid down like little building blocks that give the picture a sturdy, almost architectural feel. This method of simplifying shapes and breaking things into color would go on to shape modern art, with painters such as Picasso and Matisse owing him a real debt. Nothing dramatic happens in the image. It is simply an honest study of a familiar spot by a man far more interested in how a painting was put together than in telling any tale.