La montagna Sainte-Victoire vista dal boschetto dello Château Noir

In his last years, back home near Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne painted the same mountain over and over. Mont Sainte-Victoire stood on the horizon east of the town, and from about 1902 until his death he made dozens of views of it, this one looking out through the trees near a property called the Château Noir. By now he had stopped trying to copy the scene neatly. The mountain, the woods and the sky are built from patches of colour laid side by side, so the solid hillside and the air around it seem made of the same blocks of paint. He worked outdoors on these to the end, walking up to the same spots above Aix. In October 1906 he was caught in a storm while painting in the hills, fell ill, and died a week later at 67.