Abandoned House near Aix-en-Provence

Paul Cézanne's Abandoned House near Aix-en-Provence (1886) depicts one of the ruined or abandoned farmhouses that dotted the Provençal countryside around Aix — the derelict structures that human habitation had left behind as agricultural patterns changed. For Cézanne, such subjects offered the same opportunity as the active farmhouses of Jas de Bouffan: geometric architectural forms within the landscape, the specific texture of old stone, the relationship between human construction and natural growth. The abandonment theme carries no narrative sentiment in Cézanne's treatment — the ruined house is as valid a subject as the intact one.

Cézanne renders the abandoned house with his characteristic systematic analysis: the wall planes and apertures of the ruined structure described through his constructive stroke, the encroaching vegetation handled through more varied marks. His palette for Provençal stone subjects is warm — the specific ochres and greys of local limestone, the terracotta of roof tiles (intact or collapsed), the blue-grey of the Provençal sky. The formal relationship between architecture and vegetation provides the compositional structure.