Paul Cezanne - Mont Sainte-Victoire
In the last 20 years of his life, Paul Cezanne painted at least thirty different views depicting the famous Montagne Sainte-Victoire . . . the mountain which overlooked his place of birth (and lifelong home) of Aix-en-Provence.
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Sadly, we will not have space to feature all of them here today.
But still, I hope that this little selection will still help to show why these mountain views are among some of Cezanne’s most iconic works.
To admirers and academics alike, Paul Cezanne is the quintessential “artist’s artist”.
His friend Claude Monet once said that Cezanne was the “greatest of us all”.
While Camille Pissarro went even further in his praise - saying that Cezanne’s artistic genius was so advanced, "I think it will be centuries before we get a real account of it”
But of course, Cezanne’s influence extends so far beyond his own Impressionist peer group too.
In fact, he is often cited as a central figure in the development of Modern Art - admired by everyone from Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, to Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko and Pablo Picasso to name but a few!
So, suffice to say, the landscape of Modern art itself would be very different without the paintings of Paul Cezanne.
You see, prior to Cezanne, the history of landscape art had generally been shaped by the illusion of depth - i.e painting works which appeared to sweep across an entire vista, and extend far off into the distance.
Whereas here, the great man sought to turn this idea completely on its head . . . aiming to bring the landscape towards us instead, such that it genuinely feels as if his mountains are trying to reach out and drag us into their presence!
And as a result, he mastered this entirely singular ability for using short, flat brushstrokes to create a kind of sculptural form and forcefulness in these views - almost as if he is carving his pictures as relief sculptures, rather than painting them with an illusion of perspective.
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this reminds me of georgia o’keeffe’s fascination with cerro pedernal, a mountain on the horizon south of ghost ranch. she was quoted as saying something like “god told me if i painted it enough, he would give it to me”…indeed…or monet’s haystacks…just gotta paint it one more time, after time, after time…
Thanks George. Wonderful post for those of us who love to just stare at the art. It comes alive when you can compare different perspectives!