Trees and Houses, Provence

Trees and Houses, Provence (c.1885) at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo belongs to the mid-1880s period when Cézanne's mature structural method was being applied with increasing consistency to the vernacular architecture of the Aix-en-Provence countryside. The Oslo museum holds several Cézannes from this period, reflecting Norway's significant institutional engagement with French Post-Impressionism. By 1885 his parallel-stroke system was established and his color-temperature spatial recession was consistent, giving even relatively modest subjects like these houses and trees a formal authority that distinguishes his work from the Impressionist landscapes he had superseded. The interaction between the regular geometric forms of Provençal stone buildings and the irregular organic masses of Mediterranean trees was one of his most productive formal dialogues, generating dozens of canvases across the 1880s and 1890s.

The canvas demonstrates Cézanne's characteristic organization of the Provençal landscape into overlapping color planes. Warm ochres of stone walls interact with the varied greens of trees in a shallow, tightly organized pictorial space. His diagonal brushstrokes give visual texture to both surfaces.