Neige fondante à Fontainebleau (Melting Snow, Fontainebleau)

This MOMA canvas of melting snow in the Fontainebleau forest, painted around 1879-1880, is among Cézanne's most atmospheric early landscapes. The Fontainebleau forest had a long tradition in French art — the Barbizon painters had worked there for decades — but Cézanne's approach strips away their Romantic sentiment. The melting snow offers a subject of transitional beauty: the hard geometry of winter giving way to the softer forms of spring, ice dissolving into earth, permanence into flux. The painting shows his ability to capture a specific meteorological moment while building toward the structural permanence his mature landscapes would achieve.

The snow and bare trees are rendered in a cool, restrained palette of whites, grays, and muted greens. Cézanne's brushwork is already directional and constructive even at this relatively early date. The patches of remaining snow among dark earth create a strong value contrast that organizes the composition.