Abstract
Paul Cézanne painted the landscape Forest Interior between 1898 and 1899. This small painting depicts the interior of a forest, at a nameless location. Cézanne regularly painted landscapes in Aix en Provence, like the Mont Sainte Victoire which he painted over and over again in an effort to create a "harmony parallel to nature". Unlike pure impressionists, he is not only trying to retrace the impression from an instant through the depiction of light and in a rather superficial way; he is trying on the contrary to reproduce the visual experience of watching and interacting with the landscape. The originality of the painting stands out even more if we compare it to another depiction of a landscape in the XIXth century in France. Rousseau's Forest of Fontainebleau, painted in 1855. In Forest Interior the composition is simple and the viewer is aware of the different brushstrokes that stand out of the painting; Cézanne and the viewer are both aware that this is the flat surface of a painting; however, the painter offers us a scene that is at once close and deep.
