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PAUL CÉZANNE

WINTER LANDSCAPE, GIVERNY, 1894

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About the Artwork

In the autumn of 1894, Cézanne accepted an invitation to visit Claude Monet at Giverny, settling nearby at the Hôtel Baudry. Other artists, including Mary Cassatt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Auguste Rodin, came from Paris for gatherings that Monet organized, but despite the hospitality and the reported gaiety of these occasions, Cézanne, who was shy and uncomfortable in company, left abruptly following a misunderstanding at the end of November. This painting of an orchard next to the hotel was left behind, and the hotel proprietress, recognizing its value, retained it as compensation for Cézanne's unpaid bill. The work is a remarkable revelation of the way in which Cézanne constructed pictures. Using a thin brush laden with gray paint, he drew the outlines of trees, the orchard wall, and the gables of adjacent buildings. Patches of pale color are thinly applied to the ground and houses, leaving areas of blank canvas around each object. Cézanne intended for these lighter underlayers to infuse the canvas with luminous color and would gradually have painted over them with darker paint. Even in its unfinished state, the picture holds together and exerts a powerful, organic pull. Jennifer A. Thompson, from Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art (2007), p. 98

About the Artist

Paul Cézanne’s (French, 1839–1906) paintings took Impressionism into new territory, introducing ideas that contributed to the development of modern art. Whether depicting a cluster of fruit, a mountain, or his wife’s face, Cézanne relentlessly explored how color and light convey the substance and solidity of forms.

His distinctive painting technique—comprised of parallel brushstrokes that create blocks or squares of color—enabled him to articulate different facets of an object or landscape, and to construct images from patches of color. His experiments with space and perspective inspired younger artists—among them Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, who reportedly declared Cézanne “the father of us all.”

Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art

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Quality
Philadelphia Museum of Art Custom Prints offers exclusive custom reproductions of artworks in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hand-made in the USA using gallery-quality materials, we create prints as true to the original work as possible, using strict color management protocols and state-of-the-art printing technology.
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Many of the works offered through this store are exclusive and not available anywhere else. In addition, new works are continually added to the offering so make sure to come back and see the new releases.
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