ASHER MILLER: I'm Asher Miller, in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum. The painting before you is “Mont Sainte-Victoire in the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley,” by Paul Cézanne. Cézanne knew the landscape seen here since childhood. Between 1882 and 1890 he undertook the first major painting and drawing campaign devoted to this site. This is the most completely worked and detailed canvas of the entire group. To the right, the Arc River meanders through fields, in the middle distance. we see arches of a railroad viaduct. There's something awkward about that great single tree that slashes this painting in half, impeding the view of the valley and Mont Sainte-Victoire beyond. But the closer you look at the painting, the more it unfolds in a way that begins to help us understand what it was that Cézanne was about. Cézanne shared the interest of his fellow Impressionists in painting out of doors and in portraying the subtle interactions of light and color. But whereas Impressionist paintings typically seem casual and evanescent, Cézanne's mature works convey the underlying structure and geometry of nature. What we see on the surface is a very deliberate rhythm of forms. For example, the right slope of Mont Sainte-Victoire echoed in the road below it and above and to the right of the tree at the center that little branch that arches downward and to the right. Neither signed nor dated this painting nevertheless appears to be complete. While Cézanne spoke of painting something solid and durable like the art of museums he painted essentially for himself.