Maison Maria with a View of Chateau-Noir

The painting Maison Maria with a View of Chateau-Noir by French artist Paul Cezanne was completed in the year 1895. The title in French is La Maison Maria sur la route du Chateau Noir. This painting is located in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas in the United States.

The art period for this painting is the Post-Impressionist era, where there was a focus on taking Impressionism to the next level. This meant experimenting with form, hue, perspective and geometric shapes. The materials used are oil on canvas.

Cezanne formed a link between Impressionism and Cubism. Cubism focuses on simple geometric shapes while Impressionism focused on the correct representation of natural light and the use of bold hues. This combination is evident in his work Maison Maria with a View of Chateau-Noir where the shapes of the houses are simple geometric shapes. The blues, greens, and oranges used in this artwork are very bold. The brush strokes appear to be short and rough which gives an animated look to this landscape painting.

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were two artists that were inspired by Cezanne's work. In fact, Picasso did not fully appreciate Cezanne until one year after his death in 1906, when a retrospective was held at the Salon d'Automne (Autumn Salon) in Paris, France. An artist's retrospective is where viewers get to see the work of an artist over the span of his or her entire career. This experience caused Picasso to say of Cezanne that his "influence gradually flooded everything." The simplification Cezanne employs in his paintings and his reworking of the reality of what he observed in nature had a profound effect on Picasso.

For example, the way Cezanne flattens space in his landscape painting as in Maison Maria with a view of Chateau-Noir is similar to what Picasso did in his 1985 painting called Landscape. Even though Cubism began in 1909, the foundation was laid by Cezanne. Picasso would always refer to Cezanne's work, reinterpreting what he did and taking his ideas to the next level. This experimentation for Picasso began in 1907 along with fellow artist Braque. It is important to keep in mind that this reworking of nature in Cezanne's paintings is also the beginning of modern art. So his influence goes beyond Cubism and abstract art. The dimensions of this painting are 64 x 81 cm and framed is 94 x 110.5 x 12.1 cm.