The Big Trees

By 1904 Cezanne was in his mid-sixties and rarely left Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, painting the same hillsides and trees near his home over and over. That same autumn the Salon d'Automne in Paris gave him a whole room of his own, and younger painters had started travelling south just to watch him work. This canvas comes from those last years. It looks up into a close stand of trees, a slender trunk at the centre drawing the eye back between the darker trunks and the branches locking overhead. He built the whole thing from small patches of colour set side by side, almost like masonry, so the gaps between the trees feel as solid as the trees themselves. In several places he simply left the canvas bare, the raw weave showing through to keep the light open.