Bend in a Road in Provence

Paul Cézanne

1861

Adaline Van Horne Bequest, inv. 1945.872

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

A dirt road curves through a wooded landscape with rolling hills under a pale blue sky. A tall, slender tree stands prominently near the center. This first large landscape painted by Paul Cézanne depicts his native region, Aix-en-Provence. At the time he painted this work, Cézanne was living in Paris, where he befriended such artists as Camille Pissarro, who would later become leaders of the Impressionist movement. Although Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists, his use of the spatula to smooth broad areas of paint recalls the work of Gustave Courbet; the unique method of painting he developed set him apart from his peers. This bold composition, with its construction of form built from large areas of colour, foreshadows the artist’s later experiments with depth and persp