Description
Road at Chantilly – five months in the north
Road at Chantilly was made in 1888, when Cézanne left Provence for a few months and worked around Chantilly north of Paris. Instead of dry southern light he met denser, greener trees here – and that change is exactly what shows on the canvas. Through tall trunks the view opens onto a house at the end of the path. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this subject into your home, painted in oil on canvas.
North instead of south
We associate Cézanne almost exclusively with the country around Aix-en-Provence, yet he worked a good deal in the north of France as well – at Auvers, at Pontoise and, in 1888, at Chantilly. The northern canvases are as a rule greener and more closed: instead of a broad valley and a mountain, the subject is often narrowed to an avenue or a bend in a path, with the light arriving in pieces through the leaves.
A path closed off by a building
The composition is upright and symmetrical: trunks on both sides form a kind of portal, the ground is strewn with warm yellow-ochre light, and at the end of the path stands a pale house that stops the eye. Cézanne creates depth not by diminishing the forms but through a sequence of bands – foreground, trees, building – lying one behind another like stage flats.
An avenue for a narrow wall
In the photographs above you can see our hand-painted reproduction of this painting. Light falling in pieces through leaves is the first thing lost in print – so we paint by hand. Ten sizes, or your own measurements; with upright subjects that often pays off. The format is made for the narrower space between two windows. Check the frame in a realistic 3D preview. Among our hand-painted oil reproductions you will find Cézanne’s other roads and avenues: Bend in Forest Road, Village Road, Auvers and The House of Père Lacroix in Auvers.
- Subject: Road at Chantilly, Paul Cézanne, 1888
- Technique: hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 10 formats, stretched on a wooden stretcher frame on request, or made to your measurements
- Fact: painted during a rare working period in the north of France rather than in Provence
