Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine

Cezanne painted this mountain, the Montagne Sainte-Victoire near his home town of Aix-en-Provence, over and over across the last decades of his life. Here, around 1887, he framed it through the swinging branches of a foreground pine that echo the mountain's own broken ridge. The scene looks timeless until you notice, on the right, a long railway viaduct crossing the valley and a thin trail of steam from a passing train. The Aix to Marseille line had cut through this ancient landscape only recently. This is the most finished of three versions of the view, and one of the rare canvases Cezanne actually signed after 1880.