Paul Cezanne - Chateau Noir Tile

Château Noir, painted in Aix-en-Provence between 1903 and 1904 in oil on canvas by French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne. The neo-Gothic house rises among trees and rugged ground, its architecture tightly compressed into the surrounding landscape. Cézanne uses thick paint in broad, multicolored patches to link stone, foliage and sky while keeping the building as the structural centre of the view. Château Noir became one of his recurring late motifs on the road east of Aix-en-Provence. By revisiting it in several canvases, he could vary the balance between the geometric building and the restless forms of trees and rocks. The recently constructed house had been designed to resemble an ancient ruin. Claude Monet bought this painting on October 26, 1906, only four days after Cézanne’s death, and later hung it in his bedroom at Giverny.