With thanks to GWA member Tim Baynes for this article on a technique inspired by Cezanne.

Wandering round a crowded Room 41 in the National Gallery the other week I happened upon one particular painting which really excited me.

I was standing in front of Hillside in Provence a painting by Paul Cezanne for some time. He’d painted this between 1890 – 2 in Aix-en-Provence. I was mesmerised the colours he’d used, applied in tiny blocks.* A palette of colours to which I would not naturally gravitate.

Back in the studio I assembled what I thought would be the colours he might have used. And had a go, making three studies, oil on paper each 4 x 6 inches. The results were not that bad.

I must now try this out at scale. And having had seven days in Crete three months puts me in the mind of a Mediterranean palette.

P.S. The colours? Well my selection was:

Cadmium Orange, French Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, White, Emerald and Viridian Green, Sap Green, Chromium Oxide (green).

Sennelier the artists’ colourmen who supplied Cezanne’s paints actually list his palette in this post <link>. I have emboldened my picks where they appear in Sennelier’s list. I was not far out. I over did the greens, but I give myself half a point for Cadmium Orange, Cezanne used Vermillion.

*short brush strokes, a technique encouraged in Cezanne by his friend Camille Pizarro