La Montagne Sainte-Victoire

Paul Cézanne, the forefather of modern art, attempted in his work to fathom the lasting value and harmony of nature. The mountain of Saint-Victoire was a never-ending source of inspiration for him and it appears in his paintings time and again. He created around 40 paintings and 45 watercolours featuring this motif. This work is one of Cézanne’s first paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire. The foreground is divided into green and ochre-coloured strips and planes, with dark-green vertical accents. Behind the foreground is a section featuring houses and cypress trees, with the mountain rising up out of it. All of the traditional means for suggesting depth have deliberately been abandoned: the painting has no lines of perspective and no progression of light and dark parts. The suggestion of perspective is created primarily by the use of colour. Although Cézanne’s methods differed from those of the Impressionists, he exhibited with members of that group and referred to himself as an Impressionist. In contrast to their fleeting impressions, however, he attempted to depict the underlying structure of the landscape. All his life he tried to strike a balance between ‘eye and mind’, between observation and perception.