Le Pont des Trois Sautets 1906

Paul Cézanne made this watercolor, Le Pont des Trois Sautets, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Look at how he builds the image with these delicate, overlapping washes and strokes. It’s like he's feeling his way through the landscape. The surface is alive with these little marks – blues, greens, yellows – that somehow add up to a bridge, trees, and sky. I’m particularly drawn to the way the bridge itself seems to emerge from the surrounding foliage. Notice how the brown ink bleeds into the paper, creating this soft, hazy effect. It's like the bridge is both there and not there, solid yet dissolving into the light. Cézanne’s watercolors remind me a bit of Morandi’s still life paintings. Both artists were interested in capturing the fleeting, unstable nature of perception. Like Morandi, Cézanne shows us that seeing is not just about recording what's in front of us, but about actively constructing our own experience of the world.