Escena boscosa (Camino de Mas Jolie al Château noir)

In 1899 the Jas de Bouffan, the family house outside Aix that Cézanne had painted for most of his life, was sold to settle his mother's estate, and he lost his studio with it. Since 1897 he had been renting a room in an unfinished 19th-century house in the woods east of the town, the Château Noir, to keep his materials in. That year he tried to buy the place and the owner turned him down. Until his own studio at Les Lauves was ready in 1902, the rocky woodland around it was where he worked, including the track that climbs from the Mas Jolie farm up to the Château Noir. The Beyeler dates this canvas 1900 to 1902. He set the structure down first in a few thin strokes, horizontals for the ground and verticals for the trunks, and the colour went on over that.