Paul Cézanne

The Gulf of Marseilles Seen from L'Estaque, ca. 1885. Paul Cézanne. Oil on canvas. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
Cézanne enthused about the fishing village of L’Estaque to Pissarro in 1876: "It is like a playing card. Red roofs over the blue sea. . . . The sun is so terrific here that it seems to me as if the objects were silhouetted not only in black and white, but in blue, red, brown, and violet." Cézanne painted some twenty views of L'Estaque over the next decade, a dozen of them facing toward or across the gulf of Marseilles. In the distance of this painting, atop the hill to the right of the jetty, the towers of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde stand watch over the city of Marseilles.