La Vieille Route à Auvers-sur-Oise (Old Road at Auvers-sur-Oise)

La Vieille Route à Auvers-sur-Oise (c.1872) at the National Gallery of Canada is one of Cézanne's village road paintings from the Auvers collaboration period — documenting the old unpaved roads of the Oise valley that Pissarro had been painting since the late 1860s. The 'vieille route' designation signals its pre-modern character, suggesting a road that predated the rationalized routes of the Napoleonic era. Cézanne's consistent interest in traditional, organic, unplanned paths and roads contrasts with the Impressionist interest in modern transportation — Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare, Sisley's bridges — reflecting his preference for the permanent and geological over the transient and modern. The National Gallery of Canada's collection, built with particular strength in French nineteenth-century painting, holds this as a key example of Cézanne's formative Impressionist period before his independent structural method fully emerged.

The winding road creates a curved recession through the composition, lined by trees and walls. Cézanne's handling shows Impressionist influence — direct, responsive brushwork capturing the play of light on different surfaces. The palette is cooler and more varied than his contemporaneous Provençal work.