Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir

Deep in the picture, the bluish-gray Mont Sainte-Victoire rises. In the middle ground, slightly to the left, the ochre building of Chateau Noir peeks through, and the foreground is covered with dark green trees. The ridgeline of the mountain is traced in thin lines against the sky, and the colors of the trees and sky interlock in fine detail.

The leaves and sky are rendered as flat planes of color, each brushstroke placed beside the next. These planes overlap and create rhythm and depth in the picture. The building, the only element in the picture with a clearly geometric form, holds the whole together amid the shifting green.

Paul Cezanne aimed not, like the Impressionists, to capture a moment of light but to create painting with solidity and certainty. In his late years he secluded himself in his native Aix-en-Provence and painted this mountain to the east repeatedly. This work, from about 1904-06, is one of the culminations of that effort.

Cezanne's constructive approach to the picture had a great influence on twentieth-century painting, including Cubism and abstract art. This work is one piece in the Artizon Museum's collection of modern Western painting.