Toward Mont Sainte Victoire

Rolling across this canvas is a sweep of countryside near Aix-en-Provence, the corner of southern France where Paul Cézanne spent so much of his life. That blue-gray peak in the distance is Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain the artist returned to over and over, painting it dozens of times across the years. A green field spreads out in the foreground, dotted with small farmhouses, while a dirt path or low wall angles across the lower right and pulls the eye toward the hills beyond.

Cézanne belonged to the Post-Impressionist movement, and his method was all his own. Rather than smoothing everything into neat detail, he built the landscape out of small patches and short strokes of color, laying them side by side like tiles. The sky, the hills, and the grass all come together from these little blocks of paint. He was less interested in copying exactly what he saw and more in getting at the underlying shape and solidity of the land.

This way of thinking left a lasting mark. Younger artists such as Picasso studied Cézanne closely, and his ideas about breaking scenes into geometric forms helped open the door to Cubism. For Cézanne himself, though, the mountain was simply a puzzle he loved, one he kept working at, hoping each new attempt might bring him a little nearer to understanding it.