Mont Sainte-Victoire 1867

Paul Cézanne created this painting of Mont Sainte-Victoire with oil on canvas. The thick impasto and visible brushstrokes showcase Cézanne's engagement with materiality. This wasn’t just about depicting a landscape; it was about building an object. The density of the paint gives the scene a tactile quality, as if you could reach out and touch the rough bark of the trees or the cool surface of the water. Consider how this relates to labour. Cézanne was a bourgeois artist, but one who understood the kind of dedicated work involved in making something. The painting isn’t trying to hide the traces of its making. Rather, it puts them front and center. Cézanne elevates the act of painting to something akin to manual labour, blurring the lines between the intellectual and the physical. In doing so, he reminds us that all art is, in the end, made by human hands.