A Montanha Sainte-Victoire

By 1905 Cézanne was in his mid-60s, living quietly outside Aix-en-Provence and walking most days up to a hillside called Les Lauves, where a rented studio looked out on the mountain he'd been painting his whole life. Mont Sainte-Victoire rises east of the town, and he returned to it again and again in these last years, each time more loosely, in blocks and patches of blue, green and ochre that only settle into a mountain when you step back. In places he left the canvas bare and let the ground show through the colour. He died the next autumn, in 1906, after being caught in a storm while working outdoors.