Starting with “Trees and Cistern in the Park of the Chateau Noir” (c. 1900-1902) and “Chemin des Lauves: Turn in the Road” (c. 1904) Cézanne’s new style started to become evident with the increased use of an architectonic schematization. These two watercolors portray his progression away from the traditional values of art, even Impressionism, and towards his objectification of nature itself to provide a more lively version of the scene. Both paintings have basic, discernable forms but their lack of orientation clearly directs the viewer away from the style of art that was created before this period. The geometricization permeates these two paintings with the squared brush strokes and the layering of those strokes which created several planes of blocks of colors, shapes on shapes, thus formulating Cézanne’s vision of the forest. For example, in “Trees and Cistern” the overlapping and layering is much more manifest and apparent as various colors are used. Laura Giles in Cézanne in Focus explained these varying blocks as “fidgety patterns of color” (Armstrong and Giles, 14). These “fidgety patterns” or “patches” of color blend together to create the passing moment, the sensations which Cézanne so adamantly tried to pursue (Armstrong and Giles, 90). It was these “patterns” and “patches” that created the basis for Cézanne’s own final style and his transformation throughout his forest scenes.
More specifically, “Chemin des Lauves: Turn in the Road” shows the beginning of Cézanne’s transformation to an architectonic schematization of nature through the perspective and orientation that would give the “patches” of color and geometric shapes new or different objectified forms. Cézanne once said in a letter that “motifs multiply, the same subject seen from different angles offers a subject of study… so varied that I believe I could keep busy for months without changing position but by leaning a little to the right and then the left” (Armstrong and Giles, 28). As a result, he constantly returned to pictures, especially his watercolors, proven by the thumbtack holes created from hanging, to apply a new view he had noticed or a varying shape of the same object on the same page. This resulted in his repeated shapes or lines across the watercolor creating a symmetrical feel throughout. Indeed, in “Chemin des Lauves,” because of the varying perspective and repeated block layering, it is unknown whether the painting is to be read from the left to right or right to left (Armstrong and Giles, 114). Moreover, it is in these watercolors that Cézanne exploits his use of geometric shapes to personify the sensations of nature by using inanimate objects. As he said in a letter to Émile Bernard in 1904 “Treat nature through the cylinder, the sphere, the cone” (Freeman, Phyllis, 311). In other words, the most basic forms of all matter in nature, from where the objects truly begins, is with a basic shape. As such, “Chemin des Lauves” and “Trees and Cistern” reflect the beginnings Cézanne’s ultimate period and style through his use of geometricization both with his basic forms and the position and shape of his strokes and lines.