The Grounds of the Château Noir

By 1902 Cézanne had spent about five years haunting the grounds of the Château Noir, a rambling, half-ruined house in the hills east of Aix-en-Provence. He rented a room there, and even after he moved into a new studio nearby that year he kept coming back to paint the woods. This is one of those spots, a knot of trees clinging to a steep rocky ridge, the slope so sharp the boulders look ready to slide out of the frame. The sky barely gets through, only a few patches of pale blue near the top. In his final years he was drawn to exactly this kind of place, wild ground with no sign of people in it. He went on working in these grounds until he died in 1906.