Les Peupliers

Painted c.1879 and now in Lyon at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Les Peupliers depicts a row of poplar trees — a characteristically French motif that Monet would also obsessively study in his Poplars series of 1891. Cézanne's approach differs fundamentally from Monet's atmospheric shimmering: where Monet dissolved the trees into light and reflection, Cézanne insists on their structural presence, their vertical trunks creating a rhythmic pattern that organises the picture plane. The canvas belongs to his transitional period between Impressionism and his mature Post-Impressionist method.

The poplar trunks are rendered as strong vertical accents of grey-brown and pale ochre, their rhythmic repetition creating a quasi-architectural screen. The foliage is applied in short, varied strokes of green and yellow, more Impressionist in touch than Cézanne's later work. The sky is handled in thin, cool blue passages. The overall composition emphasises vertical rhythm over horizontal landscape recession.