House in Bellevue

House in Bellevue (c.1890) at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva depicts the farmhouse architecture of the Bellevue area southwest of Aix-en-Provence, where Cézanne frequently worked at his brother-in-law's property. The Geneva museum's holding of this canvas reflects the strong Swiss institutional collecting of French Post-Impressionist painting that was stimulated by the proximity of Geneva and Basel to Paris and by the significant French cultural influence in Swiss artistic and collecting circles. By 1890 the Provençal farmhouse had become one of Cézanne's most productive subject types: the flat ochre walls and simple geometric forms of vernacular Provençal architecture provided ideal material for his structural method, the building's planes and angles rendered through color temperature rather than drawn perspective. The Bellevue area offered a slightly different Provençal character from the Jas de Bouffan — more open, with broader views of the valley — and this house canvas represents a typical subject from his sustained working relationship with that landscape.

The house is rendered with crisp horizontal and vertical strokes of ochre and warm white, its planes asserting themselves against the softer treatment of surrounding trees. Cézanne observes the sharp Mediterranean light falling on the facade, translating it into a sequence of warm and cool passages rather than conventional shadow. The sky is applied in thin, cool bands of blue.