Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)

**ROUTE TOURNANTE**

Around 1904

Oil on canvas

This large landscape by Cézanne shows a view of a village across an almost abstract pattern of fields and trees. The turning road in the painting's title winds through the landscape and takes the viewer from the foreground to the roofs and steeple in the distance. Cézanne left areas of the canvas unpainted and integrated them into his composition. Such rejection of academic rules contributed to Cézanne's posthumous status as the "father of modernism" among avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century.

Samuel Courtauld Trust: Princes Gate Bequest, 1978

Paul Cézanne
(1839 – 1906)

French

The Big Trees about 1902-4

Oil on canvas

During the last years of his career Cézanne
produced a series of experimental works
which focus on rocks, trees and vegetation.
Here, areas of the unpainted white canvas
have been allowed to show through, while the
intertwining branches of the trees in the
upper register of the picture create a spatial
ambiguity, anticipating the experiments of
early Cubism.

Presented by Mrs A F Kessler 1958; received after her death
1983 (NG 2206)