The Poplars

By the late 1870s Cézanne had spent years working beside the older painter Camille Pissarro around Pontoise, northwest of Paris, learning to paint outdoors from him. He set up on the banks of the little river Viosne, at a spot Pissarro had already painted, and turned his easel toward a stand of tall poplars. Look at how the paint goes on. Instead of catching a fleeting moment the way an Impressionist would, Cézanne lays the foliage down in short parallel strokes, most of them slanting the same way, building the trees almost like masonry. He was pulling away from the friends he had started with, toward something firmer and more his own. The poplars stand in an orderly rank against the tangled green behind them.