121

  • Forest landscape Study

  • n.d.
  • Attributed to Paul Cézanne (French 1839-1906)
  • Oil on board
  • 15.7 x 28.4 cm., 6-3/16 x 11-3/16"
  • Gift of Professor Irma Adelman through Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts, Augustana College 2006.43

Essay by Megan O'Connor, Class of 2009 and Catherine Carter Goebel, Editor

In such beautiful examples as Forest Landscape Study, one might discern the manner in which Paul Cézanne increasingly separated himself from past artists, as well as his contemporaries the Impressionists, and elevated his style into an original realm of its own — perhaps defining the most influential and powerful force on twentieth-century modernism. Cézanne's oeuvre is difficult to arrange into chronological order because he often did not date his works (Kendall 15). By investigating subtle clues within this composition, however, it is evident that this study was painted early in his career, most likely during the 1870s. This conclusion is consistent with Cézanne's style at this time, as well as his technique of applying paint very thickly with a palette knife (Kendall 9).

The loose and fluid brushstrokes that define this piece are also typical of Cézanne's early work, which was based in Impressionism (web gallery 86). Cézanne's attempt at this style is demonstrated in his aim to capture the fugitive manner in which light played across the scene at a specific moment in time. However, even at this point in his career, Cézanne was already reinvesting greater solidity into the landscape, very different from the ultimate dissolution of form achieved by Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet (1840-1926).

The manner in which the trees spread across the panel also reinforces the dating of this piece, as Cézanne was guided at this time by Impressionist Camille Pissarro, whose compositions often include a similar veil of trees (Cachin 212). Although Cézanne's trees do not cover the entire foreground of the piece, as they might with Pissarro, the idea of peering through a grouping of trees is similarly conveyed to the viewer. During the 1870s, Pissarro and Cézanne often painted together en plein air, directly before nature. Scholars attribute Cézanne's deep reverence and affinity for landscape painting to this early influence and mentoring from Pissarro (Kendall 10). Although Cézanne lived during a time of rapid industrial growth, his art recorded the simple and infinite beauty of nature as seen in Forest Landscape Study. Yet his nature represents the perfect bridge between nineteenth and twentieth-century modernism.