View of the Bay of Marseille with the Village of Saint-Henri

This 1883 view of the Bay of Marseille with the village of Saint-Henri in the foreground is an early example of Cézanne's engagement with the L'Estaque motif — the industrial fishing village near Marseille that he painted extensively during the late 1870s and early 1880s. The view across the bay with its blue water, pale sky, and terracotta rooftops became one of the defining images of the emerging Post-Impressionist vision of the South. Braque and Picasso would later use L'Estaque as a testing ground for Cubism, following Cézanne's lead in fragmenting the visual field. The Philadelphia canvas shows his landscape method in its formative state.

The bay is rendered in broad planes of blue and green, the village foreground in warm oranges and ochres. Cézanne begins to organize the landscape through parallel diagonal strokes here, though the color relationships are still somewhat more loosely impressionist than in his fully developed mature work. The composition is boldly horizontal.