Cézanne, Paul

Bibemus: le rocher rouge

c. 1897 (250 Kb); Bibemus: The Red Rock; Oil on canvas, 91 x 66 cm (35 7/8 x 26 in); Musee du Louvre, Paris, Walter-Guillaume Collection; Venturi 776

As Michel Hoog has observed, ``The mass of the trees, treated in small and regular hatchings, is strangely interrupted by the red-orange wall of an overhanging rock, which in its color as well as in its texture forms a contrast with the rest of the canvas.'' Indeed, the curiously shimmering execution of the shrubs and trees seems to hark back to such works as the Trees at the Jas de Bouan (Venturi 474, 475), painted some ten years earlier, except that the foliage is here treated more freely and less strictly submitted to a rigorous pattern of diagonal planes. Its vividly interwoven brushstrokes and its rich nuances of greens and blues beneath a clear blue sky appear almost in conflict with the orange-red road and its violet shadows, but above all with the flat and smooth surface of the ocher rock. From a compositional point of view the completely asymmetrical and sudden intrusion of this rock upon the sylvan scene is a highly unusual feature in Cézanne's landscapes.