La Maison du pendu, Auvers-sur-Oise

In the spring of 1874 a group of painters the critics were not taking seriously mounted their own show in Paris, the one now called the first Impressionist exhibition. Cezanne sent three canvases, and this was among them, a cluster of steep-roofed houses on a slope at Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris. He had moved to the area to be near the older painter Pissarro, who taught him to lighten his palette and work outdoors, and you can feel that lesson in the crumbling ochre walls and the packed, physical paint. Despite the ominous name, no hanging is known to have happened at the house. This became the first painting Cezanne ever sold to a collector.