Description
The Great Pine – the tree that holds the whole canvas
The Great Pine is one of the most freely painted of Cézanne’s trees: a solitary Provençal pine stands at the centre of the canvas, its branches spread across almost the entire width of the scene. The canvas is held by the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) in Brazil. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this airy subject into your home, painted in oil on canvas in blues, greens and ochres.
A tree instead of a mountain
Cézanne painted the same landscape around Aix-en-Provence for decades, most often with Mont Sainte-Victoire in the background. Here he left the mountain out and hung the whole scene on a single tree. The trunk divides the canvas vertically, while the crown opens into a horizontal mesh of branches through which the sky shows – the composition therefore stands on a cross of two directions rather than on perspective.
A stroke that stays visible
The sky is not smooth: it is made of short, slanting strokes running in several directions, which give a sense of wind. Cézanne did not smooth his colour into an even surface but left it as a run of recognisable strokes – and it was this method that younger painters read as permission for a painting to admit what it is made of. The original is painted in oil on canvas, measures roughly 85.5 × 92.5 cm and by the museum’s record was made between 1890 and 1896.
A tree that fills a room
In the photographs above you can see our hand-painted reproduction of this painting. A sky of short strokes running in opposite directions is exactly what print cannot do – so we paint by hand, in oil on canvas. Ten sizes, or your own measurements on request. The almost square format does well above a chest of drawers or in a corner with pale wood. Check the frame with our 3D preview. Among our hand-painted oil reproductions you will find Cézanne’s other landscapes with trees: Mont Sainte-Victoire, Bend in Forest Road and Woods with Millstone.
- Subject: The Great Pine, Paul Cézanne, 1890–1896, São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)
- 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: the sky is made of short strokes running in opposite directions, which gives the sense of wind
The video on this page (0:59) mostly shows a close-up of a long brush laying paint into the branches, sky, trunk and foliage of The Great Pine, then the whole hand-painted painting and the painting on an easel among other paintings, and finally close-ups of the dense, layered paint in the crown.
