Cézanne, Paul (1839-1906)
Petites maisons près de Pontoise (Small Houses in Pontoise)
c.1873–1874
Oil on canvas, 40.7 x 50.9 cm
Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA
Cézanne painted this landscape when he was working alongside Camille Pissarro in the Oise valley, north of Paris. Their work from this period shares many of the same features; the houses at the center of this composition also appear in one of Pissarro’s paintings. As the latter wrote years afterward: “He became influenced by me at Pontoise and I by him. . . . [W]e were always together, but each of us unquestionably retained the only thing that counts, our own ‘sensation.’” In a manner wholly distinct from Pissarro’s, Cézanne explored pictorial strategies in his landscapes. His abbreviated marks created vibrating patchworks of color, anticipating the faceted planes of cubism. The row of thick beige strips in the right middle ground, ostensibly depicting planting rows, are also obviously brushstrokes; rather than being embedded illusionistically into the field, they appear to hover abstractly over it, making evident the materiality of painting. (Fogg)