Paul Cezanne
The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan (Environs du Jas de Bouffan), 1885-87
Oil on canvas, 25 9/16 x 31 7/8 inches.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Thannhauser Collection,
Bequest, Hilde Thannhauser,1991. 91.3907

(…) The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan has a traditional design, with a large foreground tree at one side and a clump of smaller trees at the other framing a distant view in the centre; but in Cézanne’s scrupulous adaptation, it becomes an image of a particular place beyond the walls of his family estate, seen in the warm light of Provence on a cloudless summer day.

Both the sense of order and the sense of isolation that emanate from this balanced yet uninhabited landscape convey what must have been the artist’s dominant mood in the summer of 1887 or 1888: calm but resigned (...) He summed up this mood of resignation, coupled with a deep immersion in nature, in a letter to the collector Victor Chocquet: “I should have wished to possess the intellectual equilibrium that characterizes you. . . As for the rest, I have nothing to complain about. Always the sky, the boundless things of nature, attract me and give me the chance to look with pleasure.” (…)

In The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan, the vibrant colour harmony is dominated by a rich variety of greens, modulating in one sense toward yellow and ochre, in the other toward blue and violet (…).