Great Pine near Aix

Paul Cézanne’s Pine brought fame to Provence. Alongside the celebrated Mont Sainte Victoire, it came to be perceived as a symbol of sorts, a hymn to the might and beauty of the southern French countryside.
The painting depicts a quite specific tree, a pine in the valley of the River Arc. The trunk of the tree forms the vertical mainstay of the composition, while the tangle of branches complicates the structure. Throughout his life, Cézanne would hark back to the environs of the town of Aix-en-Provence, where he used to stroll with his friends Emile Zola and Jean-Batistin Baile, and they usually took refuge from the scorching sun in the shade of such pines.
The painting might be viewed as a portrait of sorts. Patches of sunlight flicker and play; the reddish bark of the great tree is shot with shades of lilac, the foliage seems both cool and hot at the same time, Cézanne’s analytical approach to the construction of space with flat surfaces, while at the same time filling it with sensations – wind, rays of light, smells, and even, it would seem, sounds – delighted the painter’s contemporaries. It is the whole combination of complex painterly tasks that go beyond the simple conveying of impressions found in the works of the Impressionists that forms the core of Cézanne’s creative legacy.