Composition in Cezanne: a simple task

Paul Cezanne, Saint Victoire, oil on canvas, 69.9 x 89.5 cm.

This image is being used as the first task for the Visual Communications course. After looking at a few paintings and discussing various compositional elements integral to the painting: larger spatial structures, the organisation of distinctive plains and surfaces, the division of the canvas into distinctive zones and the clustering of details, as well as describing where colour abd tome have an impact on the overall composition., students are asked to write about this image. Cezanne had gradually built up his own unique way of responding to and recording the visual world. And whilst there are some conventional ways of organising his compositions that reference neo-classical ways proportions, there are some highly innovative ways that Cezanne has organised the picture plain in a way that, on the one hand, exhibits some kind of 'truth' to the subject - landscape, hillside, houses and trees, horizon etc - as well as creating features that focus purely the sensation of the image - its atmosphere. This is what is so striking about images like this. To gain an understanding of some of the compostional qualities of the above try these tasks.

The task is to simply write down what you see in relation to the following visual attribute:

• colour
• line
• shape

The second part of the task is to draw lines across the image that indicate the main compositional elements.