House and Trees (Maison et arbres)

House and Trees (c.1890) at the Barnes Foundation is one of dozens of Cézanne paintings depicting the vernacular architecture of the Aix-en-Provence countryside — the stone farmhouses, walls, and outbuildings that punctuate the Provençal garrigue. By 1890 the area within walking distance of the Jas de Bouffan had been systematically painted from multiple angles and in multiple seasons, each canvas solving slightly different aspects of the same formal problem: how to render the geometric clarity of Provençal building construction within the irregular organic complexity of the surrounding landscape. The composition — house partly obscured by trees, warm ochre walls against varied greens — is one of Cézanne's most characteristic landscape formats. The Barnes Foundation's concentration of such architectural landscapes, accumulated by Albert Barnes as demonstrations of structural principles, allows viewers to understand this recurring format as part of a methodical investigation rather than a casual choice of subject.

The farmhouse's geometric walls are articulated through warm ochre and cream color patches. Tree forms surround the building with Cézanne's characteristic faceted foliage—each leaf zone treated as a color plane rather than rendered individually. The spatial relationship between house and trees is organized through overlapping color zones rather than linear perspective.