Meadow and Farm of Jas de Bouffan

Meadow and Farm of Jas de Bouffan (c.1886) at the National Gallery of Canada depicts the working agricultural landscape of the Cézanne family estate — the fields and farm buildings that surrounded the manor house he had been painting since the early 1870s. By 1886 his parallel-stroke method was fully established, and this view of the working farm documents how he applied that method to the most prosaic agricultural subjects without seeking picturesque arrangements. The National Gallery of Canada holds significant French Post-Impressionist works as part of its comprehensive European collections, and this straightforward farmscape demonstrates Cézanne's democratic approach to subject matter: formal interest was available in any landscape of sufficient structural complexity, regardless of its conventional aesthetic appeal. The 1886 date is significant — the year of the final Impressionist exhibition (in which Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte appeared), the year of Zola's L'Oeuvre, and the year Cézanne married Hortense.

Cézanne built surfaces through parallel, directional 'constructive' brushstrokes that model form and recession simultaneously. His palette of muted greens, ochres, and blue-greys is applied in overlapping planes that create a sense of solidity without conventional shading.