MURA · THE COLLECTION · PAUL CÉZANNE

The Brook

A stream in the valley of the Arc, south-east of Aix-en-Provence, painted by Paul Cézanne between about 1895 and 1900. The canvas, 59.2 by 81 centimetres, belongs to the Cleveland Museum of Art, bequeathed by Leonard C. Hanna Jr. in 1958. It is on view in the museum's Impressionism and Post-Impressionism gallery.

Paul Cézanne · c. 1895–1900 · Oil on fabric · Post-Impressionism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum writes: "This painting depicts the valley of the Arc River that runs southeast of Cezanne's home in Aix-en-Provence. Throughout the composition, he juxtaposed strokes of different hues, describing the leaves, branches, and the stream with color rather than drawing the outlines of forms." Mura's catalogue describes trees curving over a quiet brook, their greens and blues broken into interlocking planes of colour.

How it was painted

Cézanne (1839–1906) had exhibited twice with the Impressionists but, in the museum's words, "rejected his friends' goals of capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere in their art. Instead, he sought to create balance among the forms and colors in his compositions." He rarely made preparatory sketches; the shapes on the canvas come from tonal contrast and colour. The museum's biography notes that in these years he "continued to study the underlying structure of nature, at times approaching abstraction by denying traditional perspective and using multiple viewpoints", and began leaving parts of the canvas bare. The dating brackets his first solo exhibition, opened by the dealer Ambroise Vollard in Paris in November 1895, after which Vollard bought the contents of his studio in 1897.

Where it went

Vollard is the first recorded owner. The painting passed to Walther Halvorsen in Oslo, the Galerie Brummer, the Galerie Heinemann in Munich by 1928, a private collection in Vienna, and then to Boston, where Robert Treat Paine Jr. and, by 1939, Thomas Metcalf owned it. Through Knoedler and the dealer Sam Salz it reached Leonard C. Hanna Jr. of Cleveland on 12 March 1945. Hanna bequeathed it to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1958, accession number 1958.20. It has travelled to Cézanne exhibitions in Japan (1974), Tübingen (1993) and Aix-en-Provence (2000). It is on view in Gallery 222.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to the Coast & Countryside collection with the mood "verdant": a green place built out of colour, best seen from across a room.