Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
1887–88
Oil paint on canvas
82.3 x 101 cm
Acquired by Oskar Reinhart in 1923
The Pilon du Roi, or King’s Pestle, is a rocky outcrop of the Étoile mountain range to the south of Paul Cézanne’s native Aix-en-Provence. In this painting, Cézanne dispensed with rules of perspective to explore instead his personal understanding of landscape. He constructed the receding fields and hills through horizontal bands of colour, deepening from light greens and yellows in the foreground to the dark blue outline of the hills on the horizon. Assertive vertical brushstrokes convey an impression of shimmering heat. Cézanne’s aim was not to imitate nature, but rather to attain what he described as a ‘harmony parallel to nature’.