Some impressionists turned in another direction. They felt that the importance of landscape laid in its structure, its permanence; the exact effect of sunlight on a field at a certain time of day in a certain season might be interesting to observe and record, but what mattered was that the field was there, to be planted and harvested, in sun or rain, winter or summer. They were interested in its enduring qualities. Georges Seurat changed the impressionists’ dabs of color into precise dots. He constructed his landscapes almost as though they were made with blocks. In his “Bathers” each figure is solid and settled securely so that people and landscape give the feeling they belong together. The lasting characteristics of landscape rather than the transitory ones were similarly emphasized by Cezanne, who also had begun as an impressionist. Landscape to him was something that you tramp through, experiencing step by step. But the painting was not to look like an open window; it was on canvas and made of paint. Cezanne let the canvas show through here and there so you would not forget it. Your journey into the painting is measured by blocklike brushstrokes, vertical and horizontal, designating the rocks and houses that you pass. The depth in space is limited by the mountain which seems to tip forward to create a positive end to the distance. Its curve repeats and reverses the curve of the road in the foreground. Perspective is not a matter of vanishing point but of colors carefully chosen. The greatness of the painting lies in its structure, in the way in which shapes and masses fit together as logically as the stones of a bridge. You react to the painting with your mind.
Paul Cezanne - Landscape with Mountain (1896)
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