''The Hanged Man's House'' (in French: ''La maison du pendu, Auvers-sur-Oise'') is an 1873
oil-on-canvas
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
painting by
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
. The painting is exhibited at the
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
.
Background
''The Hanged Man's House'' was presented at the first
Impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
exhibition in 1874 and was the first painting that Cézanne sold to a collector. The village depicted in the painting is
Auvers-sur-Oise
Auvers-sur-Oise (, literally ''Auvers on Oise'') is a commune in the department of Val-d'Oise, on the northwestern outskirts of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is associated with several famous artists, the most promine ...
, 27 km north of Paris.
Description
''The Hanged Man's House'' is an oil painting on canvas that measures 55 cm x 66 cm and is signed by Cézanne on the bottom left in red paint. It displays a landscape with a complicated composition. The scene presents an atmosphere of solitude, due to the absence of people and the use of a cool colour palette. From the central point of the painting, there are several axis, including two paths leading to the centre and to the left, a bank on the right and the branches of a tree leading to the top of the painting. Cézanne had been heavily influenced by his friend
Camille Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
and as a result, used grainy, broken brushstrokes and pale colours used by the
Impressionists
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
.
In this composition, Cézanne challenged the conventions of art by making deliberate imperfections of perspective. The inaccuracies can be seen in the angle of the path that leads to the left and the bank on the right.
See also
*
List of paintings by Paul Cézanne
This is an incomplete list of the paintings by the French painter Paul Cézanne. The artistic career of Cézanne spanned more than forty years, from roughly 1860 to 1906, and formed a bridge between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Cézanne ...
References
External links
*
The Hanged Man's House' at Musée d'Orsay
Paintings by Paul Cézanne
1873 paintings
Landscape paintings
Paintings in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay
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