Banks of the Marne

Banks of the Marne (c.1888) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney documents Cézanne's extended periods working outside Provence in the late 1880s — specifically his stays near Paris in the Seine-et-Marne region where the Marne river flows through a relatively flat, green, northern French landscape quite different from the arid heat of Aix-en-Provence. The cooler, greyer northern light forced adjustments to his palette and method, the characteristic warm ochres and saturated Provençal blues giving way to more muted, green-grey tones. By 1888 his structural method was fully articulated, and these northern landscapes demonstrate its universality — the parallel diagonal stroke system and color-temperature spatial recession work equally well in the grey light of the Île-de-France as in Provençal sunshine. The Art Gallery of New South Wales's acquisition places this among the key Post-Impressionist works in Australian public collections, which have historically important holdings of French nineteenth-century painting.

The reflections in the Marne are rendered as horizontal bands of colour that parallel the picture plane, transforming the water surface into an abstract grid. Warm ochre tones of the riverbank contrast with the cool blue-grey of sky and water. The handling is measured and deliberate, with each patch of colour carefully placed to build the scene's spatial logic.