Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves, 1904-1905. Paul Cézanne. Oil on canvas. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust.
Although he began his artistic career in Paris, Paul Cézanne eventually settled in his native Aix-en-Provence in southern France. There, he depicted the distinctive scenery of the region, such as the Mont Sainte-Victoire. In 25 paintings, he explored the unchanging form of this majestic mountain, abandoning traditional means of representation such as the use of perspective to delineate space. He chose instead to depict the natural world as simplified geometric shapes composed of shifting planes of brilliant color. Using small, parallel strokes and erasing the solidity of the forms, Cézanne merged the foreground, middle ground, and background into one unified space, paving the way for Cubism.
