At a distance, this painting by Paul Cézanne reads clearly as a single farmhouse set against one of the artist's favorite subjects, the Mont Sainte-Victoire, a craggy mountain ridge in his native Provence in southern France. At close range, however, at patches of saturated color laid down with broad brushstrokes intersect and overlap in a dynamic way. Angled in several directions, these brushstrokes create lively rhythms at odds with the feelings of solidity and permanence that emanate from the overall image.
Although he was influenced early in life by the outdoor studies of fellow painter Camille Pissarro, Cézanne went beyond the Impressionists' interest in capturing changing light and atmospheric effects. He analyzed the hues, forms, and shapes of nature, and gave a firmer structure to his landscapes. In House in Provence horizontal bands of color give a rooted simplicity to the composition, which is balanced by the vertical accents of the trees, the sheer rock faces, and the cubic volume of the house. Cézanne's emphasis on analyzing relationships of forms in space influenced many younger artists, including Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who collaborated in the development of Cubism in the decade immediately following Cézanne's death.
I wanted to make of Impressionism something solid and enduring like the art in museums.
-Paul Cézanne, as recorded by painter Maurice Denis in 1907
