Mont Sainte-Victoire (Cézanne)

Mont Sainte-Victoire
Artist	Paul Cézanne
Year	1904-06
Medium	Oil on canvas
Location	Princeton University Art Museum

Mont Sainte-Victoire is a series of oil paintings by the French artist Paul Cézanne.

The Montagne Sainte-Victoire is a mountain in southern France, overlooking Aix-en-Provence. It became the subject of a number of Cézanne's paintings.

In these paintings, Cézanne often sketched the railway bridge on the Aix-Marseille line at the Arc River Valley in the center on the right side of the picture. Especially, in Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley (1885–1887), he depicted a moving train on this bridge.

Only half a year after the opening of the Aix-Marseille line on October 15, 1877, in a letter to Émile Zola dated April 14, 1878, Cézanne praised the Mont Sainte-Victoire, which he viewed from the train while passing through the railway bridge at Arc River Valley, as a “beau motif (beautiful motif)”, and, in about that same year, he began the series wherein he topicalized this mountain.

These paintings belong to Post-Impressionism. Cézanne is skilled at analysis: he uses geometry to describe nature, and uses different colours to represent the depth of objects.

Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley (1885–1887), Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine (c. 1887), Courtauld Institute of Art

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1890, Scottish National Gallery

Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir, 1904–06, Bridgestone Museum of Art

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