Cezanne's Trees

SELWYN LEAMY shows you how to emulate the French master’s techniques and describe forms with your brushwork in this simple demonstration

- Selwyn Leamy

This painting of a tree-lined avenue at Paul Cézanne’s family estate perfectly captures the feeling of a hot, sunny afternoon. He slightly compresses the space in The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan, particularly the grasses and the shadows in the foreground, which seem quite flat. Concentrating on the tree at the left of the canvas, we can see his skill at creating a tangible sense of three-dimensional form. The bright foliage shimmers against the black silhouette of the trees, as the sun-baked path disappears under the shady canopy.

A large swathe of shadow dominates the image, and from this Cézanne builds the structure of the foliage and trunks with thick, slab-like blocks of color. These brushstrokes stand out against the dark paint, but moving across the image, they subtly blend and disappear into the background beyond.

Cézanne used heavy, diagonal strokes to create the clumps of the leaves. The trunk was described with a more vertical stroke, the lighter red-brown paint working in contrast to the blue shadow. In this painting, Cézanne used a palette knife as well as a brush to apply paint thickly, adding to the overall form and texture of the piece.

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