"Mont Sainte Victoire"
Cézanne’s “Mt. Saint Victoire” paintings are pivotal to understanding Cézanne as an artist and his progressions and regressions throughout his life, including his path to Cubism. Mt. Saint Victoire is located in Cézanne’s hometown in Aix-En- Provence. It notably became a fixture in his life, one of his obsessisions, considering he painted this subject in both oil and watercolor over thirty times throughout his life. Thus, this watercolor of Mt. Saint Victoire is just another in a series but is a definite depiction in Cézanne’s progression to his geometric style that led to Cubism. While this is a nature scene, it is important because it is not another forest scene proving his Cubist tendencies carry over into other aspects of his work. His shift towards distortion and abstraction is clearly present considering the watercolor lacks a distinct form. We can clearly make out the mountain and its valley so therefore it is not completely abstract. However, those are in the form of a basic triangle and several indistinct forms in the foreground. Where exactly does the sky or valley begin? Like the forest scenes, there is a clear architectonic schematization of nature as the objects within nature are objectified into basic, geometric shapes. All across the watercolor there are several objects clearly morphed into cylinders and vertical lines, such as the beginnings of a house in the bottom right hand corner. The brush strokes have even been applied in block shapes.