The artwork “Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from les Lauves” was created by the renowned artist Paul Cézanne around 1906. It is executed in oil on canvas and belongs to the Cubism art movement, though it predates the formal beginnings of Cubism and shows Cézanne’s significant influence on the movement. This piece is a landscape genre painting that is part of a series focusing on Mont Sainte-Victoire. Currently, the artwork graces the collection of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.
The artwork portrays the majestic Mont Sainte-Victoire in the south of France, which was a recurrent subject in Cézanne’s work. The mountain looms in the background, its sloping form barely outlined against a tumultuous sky of contrasting blues and greens. In the foreground, the artist has depicted a view of the surrounding countryside, with buildings interspersed amongst patches of vegetation. Using a rich palette of earthy tones, he structured the landscape with facets of color that suggest the textures and forms of the terrain, making the scene pulsate with a dynamic sense of life. His technique of applying paint in discrete brushstrokes builds a complex mosaic that teeters on the edge of abstraction, yet retains a firm anchoring in the observed world.
Cézanne’s treatment of the subject demonstrates his revolutionary move away from the traditional perspectives that dominated artistic practice up to that time. Instead, he offers a fragmented view that implies multiple viewpoints, an approach that laid the groundwork for Cubist artists to later explore. While this painting carries hints of what would become known as Cubism, its affiliation with the movement is more about its influence on subsequent developments rather than strict adherence to Cubist style. Cézanne’s interest in forming a bridge between the observable world and the artist’s perception is clearly embodied in this landscape, immortalizing his deep connection to the mountain and its environs.
