Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan

Description

Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan is an 1885–86 painting by Paul Cézanne, made directly from nature near his family’s residence outside Aix-en-Provence. Slender bare trees cross the view, while houses and foliage recede through bands of color. The familiar landscape becomes an exploration of space, rhythm and structure.

Cézanne works with lean, visible brush marks and a relatively simple palette of yellows and greens. Areas left unpainted allow the ground to participate in the color relationships, giving the surface an open, searching quality. In Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan, the vertical trunks establish a recurring rhythm against the retreating landscape. The painting makes ordinary surroundings an opportunity to reconsider how shapes, intervals and color can describe both a place and the experience of seeing it.