Explore the Background of this artwork, L'Estaque, Melting Snow.
Cézanne moved to Provence in 1870 to evade military service during the Franco-Prussian War. He soon moved to L'Estaque, where he painted a number of landscapes. Critics differ in their interpretation of this painting, some see it as wholly personal, other as a response to the war with Prussia. Supporting the latter view, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka saw the painting as making a statement on social and political transformation and wrote of the political context in which it was created, "what is our response to those red-roofed houses which are held, as if in a vice, between a leaden sky and a sliding block of snow?"
Franco-Prussian War Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka L'Estaque Provence