Maison au bord de la Marne (House on the Marne)

Maison au bord de la Marne (House on the Marne, 1888) shows Cézanne applying his systematic analytical method to the landscape of northern France during one of his periodic Paris-region stays. The Marne river, east of Paris, was less fashionable as a painting site than the Seine at Argenteuil or the Normandy coast, and Cézanne's choice of it reflected his indifference to picturesque reputation. A riverside house beside the Marne posed the same formal problems as a house beside the Arc in Provence — the building's geometric volumes against the organic forms of water and trees — but with the specific qualities of northern light and northern vegetation. By 1888 he was capable of applying his constructive method to any landscape without requiring the emotional or biographical associations of his Provençal subjects to motivate the work. The Kunstmuseum Bern holds this canvas as part of Swiss collection that includes several major Post-Impressionist works that were acquired during the period when Cézanne's significance for modern art was becoming widely understood in European collecting circles.

Cézanne organizes the riverbank composition through his characteristic analysis: the house providing geometric vertical and horizontal elements, the Marne's reflective surface creating horizontal depth below, the trees offering organic forms that contrast with architectural geometry. His palette for the northern subject is cooler than his Provençal work — the grey-greens of the Marne's willows and poplars, the blue-grey of the river under northern light, the warm stone of the house providing the composition's warmest notes.