L'Estaque, Melting Snow [SEP] creator
L'Estaque, Melting Snow
L'Estaque, Melting Snow is a c. 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. It shows a view from the outskirts of L'Estaque, a small village near Marseille, with a steep hillside covered in a drift of melting snow underneath a foreboding dark grey sky. Filled with intense emotion, the painting has been described as similar to the work of Vincent van Gogh the following decade, and a painting more formally similar to early 20th-century than contemporaneous art.
"L'Estaque, Melting Snow" was painted in a single session. It is one of only two snow-laden winter subjects Cézanne painted.
Cézanne moved to Provence in 1870 to evade military service during the Franco-Prussian War. He soon moved to L'Estaque, where he painted a number of landscapes. Critics differ in their interpretation of this painting, some see it as wholly personal, other as a response to the war with Prussia. Supporting the latter view, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka saw the painting as making a