Cezanne's Mount Sainte-Victoire

Mont Sainte-Victoire is a 1,011m high mountain located near Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Paul Cézanne repeatedly painted this mountain, towering over his hometown of Aix, from the 1880s until his later years. The series of Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings , which total more than 80 pieces in oil and watercolor, is considered the culmination of Cézanne's artistic career and also a monument that had a major impact on the development of modern painting.

The period and number of paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire

• 1882-1885: First series, depicting mountains as an element in the landscape
• Around 1886-1890: Mountains became the center of the painting, and they were depicted larger and more powerfully.
• Late 1890s - 1906: A series of watercolors. A pursuit of more simplified and abstract mountain forms.
• Oil paintings: Approximately 30 pieces
• Watercolors: Approximately 50 pieces

Representative works

• Mont Sainte-Victoire (1885-1887, Courtauld Gallery)
• Mont Sainte-Victoire (1888-1890, Phillips Collection)
• Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902-1904, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904-1906, Kunstmuseum of Fine Arts, Zurich)
• Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley (1882-1885, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Cézanne attempted to capture the solid structure of nature through his paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire. For Cézanne, this mountain was not just a landscape, but an embodiment of the "order of nature." He painted Mont Sainte-Victoire with simplified forms and solid composition, expressing the "pictorial truth" he found there. Cézanne also used color as an element to compose form and space. The contrast and harmony of different color planes creates a unique sense of order and stability in the pictorial space. These pictorial spaces by Cézanne had a decisive influence on 20th century painting, including later Cubism.

Mont Sainte-Victoire is a motif that embodies the essence of Cézanne 's art and is truly worthy of being called the artist's "sacred mountain." By continuing to paint this mountain, Cézanne established his own unique style of painting. The pictorial truth that Cézanne found in Mont Sainte-Victoire opened up new horizons for modern painting.