This has to be one of Cézanne’s greatest landscapes and I very much hope it might be included in the forthcoming exhibition at Tate Modern. It normally resides, however, in St Petersburg, so given the current situation it’s unlikely it’ll be allowed to travel to the west. Alas.
By the late 1890s Cézanne was at the height of his powers. He has deployed them here above all, I think, to convey the vigour and strength coursing through this majestic tree and out into the surrounding countryside. First, two small whitewashed and terracotta tiled farm buildings either side of the trunk establish a sense of scale. Then there’s the cropped composition, the deliberate placement of the trunk off centre, the emphasis on the diagonal energy of the branches – all of which create a sense of the tree trying to burst out of the confines of the picture’s frame. Thirdly, there’s the colour. Like his Impressionist friends and colleagues, Cézanne had for years limited himself to a spectral palette, that is the seven colours of the rainbow, without the deadening addition of any black or grey. You’ll notice too how often he places an orange next to a blue, a complementary contrast which further increases luminosity and impact. Finally the clusters of short, parallel brushstrokes, some vertical, others diagonally orientated, with which he’s described the foliage and foreground create a sort of percussive rhythmic pattern that surrounds the more solid form of the tree itself.
At this point in his life Cézanne was a recluse in his native Provence, almost totally forgotten or ignored by the public. But in 1895 an entrepreneurial young picture dealer, Ambroise Vollard, had put on a small exhibition of his work in his tiny gallery not far from the Opéra in central Paris. It was from here that a wealthy Russian businessman bought a number of his works, hence its current location in the Hermitage. A younger generation of artists, including Matisse and Picasso, also frequented Vollard’s gallery and slowly, after years of obscurity, Cézanne’s reputation began to grow. It was Matisse who wrote much later of the small Cézanne canvas he bought from Vollard: ‘it has sustained me morally in the critical moments of my venture as an artist; I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance.’
