Rocks at Fontainebleau

Paul Cézanne

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Massive boulders tumble through a shadowed forest clearing in this hushed, monumental vision of the Fontainebleau woods south of Paris, a favorite retreat of painters since the Barbizon era. Cézanne builds the scene from patchwork strokes of slate blue, ochre, and moss green, treating rock and foliage alike as faceted planes of color that seem to hover between solidity and dissolution. The absence of any human figure heightens the primeval stillness, while the interlocking geometry of stone and tree trunk reveals the structural thinking that would soon inspire Cubism. A quietly powerful late work, it rewards long looking with the sense of nature caught mid-transformation.