Maisons sur la colline, Provence (Houses on the Hill)

Maisons sur la colline, Provence (Houses on the Hill), painted around 1904 and held at the White House, is one of the late Cézanne landscapes showing the characteristic Provençal combination of human habitation and natural terrain — stone houses on hillsides, surrounded by the Mediterranean scrub and rocky outcrops of the Aix region. These anonymous Provençal houses interested Cézanne not as architectural subjects but as geometric forms in the landscape — cubes of masonry that provided solid anchors in compositions of otherwise variable natural forms. The White House collection acquired this as one of the Cézannes accessible to a general audience.

Cézanne treats the Provençal houses as geometric volumes in dialogue with the organic landscape, their rectilinear forms contrasting with the irregular silhouettes of trees and hillside. The construction method applies consistent colour patches across architectural and natural elements alike, unifying the scene through pictorial method.