Montagne Sainte-Victoire, from near Gardanne

Cézanne's repeated studies of Montagne Sainte-Victoire are among the most consequential series in Western painting, representing his lifelong investigation of how solid form and atmospheric space can be simultaneously expressed through color alone. This 1887 view from near Gardanne, now at the National Gallery of Art, shows the mountain from an unusual southern approach, with the geometric cluster of Gardanne's buildings in the middle ground. It demonstrates Cézanne's method of building forms through parallel planes of color rather than line or tonal modeling — a discovery that would prove foundational to Cubism and virtually all subsequent geometric abstraction.

Cézanne constructs the landscape through carefully modulated passages of warm ochre, cool blue-green, and grey, applied in his characteristic parallel hatch-like strokes. The distinction between near and far is achieved through color temperature rather than conventional perspective.