The Etang des Soeurs, Osny, near Pontoise

Paul Cézanne painted this view of a pond in a woodland clearing while visiting fellow artist Camille Pissarro in Osny, a village north of Paris. Unusually for Cézanne, he applied the dense layers of paint with a palette knife, a tool traditionally used to mix colours. The colour is spread diagonally, creating a dynamic patchwork. The broad shaft of light filtering through the trees draw our attention from the shadowed foreground to the opposite bank.