Au bord de la Marne

By the late 1880s Cézanne had largely left Paris and its exhibitions behind and was working quietly toward his own way of building a landscape. Here he takes a plain stretch of the Marne, the river east of Paris, and treats the far bank of trees and houses as a set of firm blocks, then lets the water double them in a still reflection below. There are no people, no incident, almost no weather. The interest is entirely in how the shapes lock together and how the mirrored image steadies the whole scene. Cézanne returned to motifs like this again and again, less concerned with the particular spot than with getting the structure of it right.