Pines and Rocks (Fontainebleau?)

Paul Cézanne, 1897 · Gallery 501 · Floor 5

The title of this one is Pines and Rocks. Then, in parentheses, Fontainebleau… question mark. So… what’s up with the question mark? Fontainebleau’s an actual forest near Paris. But for years, people thought this was Provence. Cézanne’s home turf. Other end of the country. Look at those rusty red pines. Grey rocks going pink. Blue poking through the branches. Gorgeous. But good luck getting an address out of it. Look at the pale gaps between the brushstrokes. That’s just bare canvas. And where there is paint, it’s thin. Almost like watercolor. That thin paint, by the way, is what moved the date back. They had it down as one of his last. About seven years earlier, when he’s spending time near Paris. So… the question mark stays. But those bare patches? Depends who you ask. A couple of years before he painted this, Cézanne finally gets his own show. He’s fifty-six. His old friend Pissarro goes to see it and writes his son afterward. Says some of the still lifes are perfect. But there are others that look like they aren’t even finished yet, and he likes those even better. And Cézanne himself? He’s not so sure. Near the end of his life, he writes a younger painter about the color, the light. Those little places where one thing meets another. He can’t quite get it all down. Can’t cover the whole canvas. The picture stays incomplete. Now look back at those gaps. He was already leaving them here. Years before he tried to explain them.

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