Das Haus von Père Lacroix, Auvers-sur-Oise

In 1873 Cézanne left Paris for the small town of Auvers-sur-Oise, and he settled a short walk from the older painter Camille Pissarro, who had been coaxing him to lighten his palette and paint straight from the motif. The two often set up side by side that year. You can feel Pissarro's lesson here in the loosened, sunlit brushwork, though the temperament is Cézanne's own. The house sits square and stubborn against the trees, its pale wall pushing forward, a single dark window holding the middle of the picture. The following spring, again at Pissarro's urging, Cézanne showed work in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris. The houses he painted still stand on the rue du Gré.