125. Mont Sainte-Victoire. Paul Cezanne. 1902-1904 CE oil on canvas.

• Form
  • Used perspective through juxtaposing forward warm colors with receding cool colors
  • Cezanne had contempt for flat painting; wanted rounded and firm objects, but ones that were geometric constructions made from splashes of undiluted color.
  • Not a momentary glimpse of atmosphere, as in the Impressionists, but a solid and firmly constructed mountain and foreground
  • The landscape is seen from an elevation
  • Cezanne’s landscapes rarely contain humans
  • Three horizontal sections divide the painting, connected by a complex series of diagonals that bring your eye back
  • The viewer is invited to look at space, but not enter
  • Cezanne allows blank parts of the canvas to shine through
  • Broad brushstrokes dominate the painted surface
• Context
  • One of 11 canvases of this view near his studio in Aix in the south of France;the series dominates Cezanne's mature period.
  • Not the countryside of Impressionism; more interested in geometric forms rather than dappled effects of light.