Paul cézanne mont sainte-victoire analysis

The peak of mont sainte-victoire near Aix attracted Cezanne all his life. He identified with it as the ancients with a holy mountain on which they set the dwelling or birthplace of a god.

La montagna sainte victoire cezanne biography youtube Your email address will not be published. He painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Kitchen Table. In the painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the mountain comes less fully to view; its majesty is diminished by the foreground trees and the great extension of the valley at the right.

Only for Cezanne it was an inner god that he externalized in this mountain peak - his striving and exaltation and desire for repose. In the painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the mountain comes less fully to view; its majesty is diminished by the foreground trees and the great extension of the valley at the right.

The stable mountain is framed by Cezanne's tormented heart, and the peak itself, through more serene, is traversed by restless forms, like the swaying branches in the sky. A pervading passionateness stirs the repeated lines in both. Even the viaduct slopes, and the horizontal lines of the valley, like the colors, are more broken than in the picture in New York.

The drawing and brushwork are more impulsive throughout.

La montagna sainte victoire cezanne biography Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier. Metropolitan Museum of Art. It will then take a closer look at one example, namely the version housed in the Barnes Foundation collection in Philadelphia, which was painted around to Art in Context.

Yet the distant landscape resolves to some degree the strains of the foreground world. The sloping sides of the mountain unite in a single balanced form the dualities that remain divided, tense, and unstable in the observer's space - the rigid vertical tree and its extended, pliant limb, the dialogue of the great gesticulating fronds from adjoining trees that cannot meet, and the diverging movements in the valley at the lower edge of the frame.

It is marvelous how all seems to flicker in changing colors from point to point, while out of this vast restless motion emerges a solid world of endless expanse, rising and settling. The great depth is built up in broad layers intricately fitted and interlocked, without an apparent constructive scheme. Towards us these layers become more and more diagonal; the diverging lines in the foreground seem a vague reflection of the mountain's form.

These diagonals are not perspective lines leading to the peak, but, as in the other view, conduct us far to the side where the mountain slope begins; they are prolonged in a limb hanging from the tree.

It is this contrast of movements, of the marginal and centered, of symmetry and unbalance, that gives the immense aspect of drama to the scene.

La montagna sainte victoire cezanne biography wikipedia He ended up buying a property just north of Aix, on the hill Les Lauves, and built a studio in The mountain rises above the smooth, angular quarry, the crest tying the landscape together and providing a sense of stability. He was one of the leading Post-Impressionists of the 19 th century, and rightfully so, because he painted from his own unique impression so to speak of the world. The Oxford Dictionary of Art.

Yet the painting is a deep harmony, built with a wonderful finesse. It is astounding how far Cezanne has controlled this complex whole. If you wish to see his subtlety at work, consider only the bending of the tree which becomes perpendicular to the mountain's slope when it reaches the horizon. Or observe the rectangular and peaked forms of the house beside the trunk of the same tree.