Mont Sainte-Victoire (c1886). Oil on canvas. 65 x 92. 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, 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, and, in about that same year, he began the series wherein he tropicalized 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.
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