Painting Detail
Banks of the MarneArtist: Paul Cezanne
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 65.5x81.3 cm
Date: c. 1888
Genre: Landscape
Source: 1930
Landscapes were perhaps the most favoured motif in the work of the Impressionists, and in landscapes a shivering reflection in water was the symbol of the changeability of the visible world. In Cezanne's painting, however, the reflection is still, the water seems to be frozen, like a mirror. Despite his friendship with the Impressionists, Cezanne rejected their approach to painting and sought to capture not the transitory but the permanent. The markedly centralised composition of the painting, framed by trees, is enclosed and stable. The brushstrokes follow the form of the object and model generalised shapes which are really more like simple geometrical bodies. The tonality of the colouring is determined by the green trees and bluish air, made almost thick and tangible by the will of the artist. Cezanne brings out the clear structure of the material world and endows nature with a certain majesty.