Landscape with Trees (1895-1898)

This drawing was a single page from a larger sketchbook which Cezanne used in the late 19th century. It is one of the few landscape sketches found within it, as most artworks were portraits of friends and family.

In front of us we see a series of small trees dotted around the foreground, with a series of thicker foliage at the very back. The overall piece seems unfinished but was probably just intended as a study piece for a later painting, and so was never meant to hold too much detail. It may have been a means to planning the layout of a later composition. The sketchbook itself features a combination of studies such as this as well as a number of personal portraits which were intended to develop his technical skills as well as capturing memories in time of his family. You will find both his wife, Madame Cezanne, and well as his son in multiple artworks. The book itself is one of the few still left intact, with most others broken up after the artist's death and sold on individually.

Cezanne himself seemed more content when living in the French countryside. His paintings developed a brighter palette than during his earlier time in Paris and this perhaps reflected his improved mood. He took advantage of his sketchbooks to work whilst travelling around his local area. Cezanne would work whenever the desire struck him, and they would never be possible with oils. He was able to transport these drawing materials around with him, just as JMW Turner had done so within the English countryside several centuries earlier. His sketchbooks therefore were not planned series of work, but more just a random set of works which each served different purposes. It is necessary to compare some of these drawings with his paintings of the same period in order to gauge which ones were studies with a followup piece in mind.

The National Gallery of Art own the original sketchbook and the artworks within it range from the 1870s to the 1890s. It is interesting that a single binding would be used over such a long period. It is possible that he kept it with him in order to refer to it from time to time. Alternatively, perhaps he tidied it away for a period and then made use of it again with the remaining blank pages. We can learn a lot from how he varies his work across the sketchbook, as most other drawings from his career are individually presented and hard to link with any other related pieces. His skills as a draughtsman are respected by academics but sometimes forgotten by the public, making their inclusion in upcoming exhibitions all the more important.