Introduction

Abstract

Of the complex of motives, predispositions, hesitations, and talents that Cezanne may have brought to his pursuit of painting, we are allowed to glimpse at least one clearly: the matter of contact between independent color patches. In the last decade of his life he developed a manner of painting in which he set down separate patches of color in various parts of his canvas, suggesting the forms of the landscape he was studying and yet creating a rhythmical surface which was formally satisfying. It was a mode of drawing, painting, and creating a dynamic composition at the same time; but it required that the patches be brought together.

Yet, at my age—about seventy—the color sensations that produce light are the cause of the abstractions which prevent me from covering my canvas fully, or pursuing the delimitation of objects where their points of contact are tenuous and delicate.—Paul Cézanne, Letter to Emile Bernard, October 23, 1905 (Doran, 1978)