Paul Cézanne

Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Mrs H. Jonas, New York
Jacques Ullmann, Paris
Thence by descent to the present owner

Ottawa, National Gallery of Ottawa and travelling, Paintings from the Ambroise Vollard Collection, 1950-51, no. 9

Lionello Venturi, 'Giunte a Cézanne,' in Commentari 2, 1951, pl. XVI, fig. 53
John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996, vol. I, no. 886, catalogued p. 524; vol. II, no. 886, illustrated p. 310

The canvas is lined. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. The original canvas is slightly smaller than the lining and when unframed the edges of the lining are visible. Apart from some slight thinning to the paint surface, mostly to the left hand side, this work is in good condition. Colours: The background of the work is more cream and brighter and the darker tones are slightly lighter in the original.
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This striking and unusual landscape was painted during the last years of Cézanne's life, which he spent in seclusion from the art world, painting and living out his days in the familiarity of the Aix-en-Provence landscape. This work, with its large stretches of unpainted canvas and its rapid, almost sketch-like brushstrokes, resembles more the simplified qualities of Cézanne's singular watercolour landscapes than his usually heavily-worked oil paintings. In his watercolours, the artist would often celebrate the translucent quality of the medium with light, rapid brushstrokes and great untouched areas of paper.

This quality lends a vibrant energy to the forests and rocks, an energy that Cézanne saw in the landscapes that surrounded him. He told his friend Joachim Gasquet that "the earth here is always vibrating, it has a harshness that throws the light back at you and makes you blink, but you sense how it is always nuanced, full and soft. A rhythm inhabits it" (quoted in Finished, Unfinished: Cézanne, Ostfildern, 2000, p. 352). This rhythm is evident in the rapid, textured strokes of the present landscape.

At the end of his life, Cézanne began to feel that his time was running out. He would often create compositions entirely without pencil sketches to plan out the canvas beforehand. He would take a brush and sketch with paint directly on to the surface. This shows both his confidence in composition after an entire lifetime of work, and also his urgent desire to express as much as he possibly could before the end arrived. This also explains why many of his works from late in his career seem unfinished. He had arrived at a place where he could concentrate an enormous amount of power and emotion in to a bare minimum of brushstrokes.