Footpath in the Woods (1882–84): Art, History and Details

Footpath in the Woods (1882–84) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Paul Cezanne is known for moving beyond the visible brushwork of Impressionism toward a “constructive stroke,” in which each mark built a cohesive whole. He favored subjects that he saw as timeless, including landscape, the focus of this watercolor. Cezanne depicted chestnut trees at the Jas de Bouffan, his family estate outside Aix-en-Provence in southern France. He used graphite lines and areas of muted watercolor, but also the whiteness of his sheet of paper to represent the scene. The artist worked in watercolor throughout his entire career, seeing it as a site of experimentation and for developing new ideas.

Object facts

• Title: Footpath in the Woods
• Date: 1882–84
• Creator attribution: Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor and graphite on modern laid paper
• Dimensions: Support: 51.6 x 35.9 cm (20 5/16 x 14 1/8 in.); Matted: 62.9 x 48.3 x 0.6 cm (24 3/4 x 19 x 1/4 in.); Image: 47.9 x 31.4 cm (18 7/8 x 12 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2021.165

A detail from the museum

This drawing was once owned by collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein, in whose Parisian apartment it would have been seen by a young Pablo Picasso.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cézanne, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Bronzen von Edgar Degas. Exh. cat. Berlin: Galerie Flechtheim, 1927.
• Scheffler, Karl. “Französische Zeichnungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts bei Paul Cassirer.” Kunst und Künstler 28, no. 5 (1930): 192.
• Venturi, Lionello. Cézanne: Son art, son œuvre. Paris: Paul Rosenberg, 1936.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.