Paul Cezanne, born in France in 1839, began oil painting from the early 1860s. His earlier work tended to be darker and very roughly painted, bearing little connection to the artist’s later style. Subject matter tended to including dreams and religious figures, …show more content…
Braque painted this work in honour of Cezanne following his death, and was heavily influenced by his style. The Viaduct can be seen throughout many of Cezanne paintings, as well as the same colour palettes and hatching brushwork which were used to create the Viaduct at L’Estaque; a place where Cezanne once lived himself. Within the painting, Braque establishes a distorted depth perception, as the figures in both the foreground and background seem to be ‘pushing forward’, making whole composition to seem almost two-dimensional. By reduction of the subject matter to geometric forms, Braque creates a ‘dissolution of form’ throughout the piece which later became a key quality of analytical cubism: in which there was no single viewpoint and geometric shapes, planes and collage made up the subject