Paul Cézanne painted The House with the Cracked Walls in oil on canvas between 1892 and 1894. This painting is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
What is depicted in The House with the Cracked Walls?
The painting shows an abandoned house with a large crack that runs along the entire length of the building. The house is located on the rocks surrounded by tall and slender trees.
The House with the Cracked Walls – Analysis
During the 1890s, Cézanne’s tendency to paint in an intimate, completely secluded environment became more and more frequent. Cézanne then discovers the areas east of Aix, which we recognize by their distinctly rocky landscapes and the abandoned dilapidated architecture that fascinated the painter. In addition to the house with cracked walls, Cézanne often returned to the motif of Château Noir. Common to these spaces is decay, abandonment, a kind of poetic merging of nature with decaying spaces, and a strong melancholic component that exudes the scene.
Related Artworks
The motif of isolated and abandoned architecture appears in several of Cézanne’s works, among which the painting Château Noir, created between 1903 and 1904, stands out. This painting is part of the Museum of Modern Art collection in New York.
