Hameau à Payennet près de Gardanne (Hamlet at Payennet, near Gardanne)

Hameau à Payennet près de Gardanne (c.1886) was painted during Cézanne's significant stay at Gardanne, a hilltop village southwest of Aix-en-Provence, between 1885 and 1886. The Gardanne period was pivotal: Cézanne engaged intensively with the geometry of the village's cubic forms stacked on the hillside, developing the analytical approach to architectural and natural forms that would culminate in his greatest work. The hamlet at Payennet, a dependent farmstead of the Gardanne area, offered similar formal subjects — buildings, walls, trees — that Cézanne could subject to the same structural scrutiny. The painting is now held at the White House in Washington.

The composition organizes the hamlet's architecture and surrounding landscape into geometric planes and volumes, with buildings simplified to their essential cubic forms. Cézanne's brushwork — short, directional strokes that build color across the surface — treats trees, walls, and earth with equal analytical attention. The palette is warm ochre, green, and blue.