Bend Of The Road At The Top Of The Chemin Des Lauves

Bend of the Road at the Top of the Chemin des Lauves (c.1904) at the Beyeler Foundation documents Cézanne's daily journey from the Aix city center to the studio he had built on the Lauves hill in 1902. He had constructed the Lauves studio specifically to give himself a north-facing space large enough to work on the monumental Large Bathers series, and the road leading up to it became one of the most frequently walked paths of his final years. His transformation of this ordinary working route into a major painting subject is characteristic of his approach to motif: any piece of landscape accessible to sustained, concentrated observation could yield formal problems of sufficient complexity and interest to motivate serious work. The Beyeler Foundation in Basel, which holds several late Cézannes alongside major works by Mondrian, Picasso, Klee, and Giacometti, provides an institutional context that acknowledges his central role in the history of twentieth-century art.

The winding road provides a strong compositional device that draws the eye into and through the landscape, flanked by the characteristic stone walls and umbrella pines of the Aix countryside. Cézanne's colour patches render the road surface, walls, and trees as variations on the same constructive procedure.