Magic Mountain
Cezanne put it on canvas. Now art lovers are putting it on their summer itineraries.

By Robert V. Camuto
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 30, 2006

It was a blustery Saturday afternoon on the cusp of spring in Le Tholonet, France, and we were spending it as a family of art-loving Americans are expected to in this part of the world -- tromping around the hills just east of Aix-en-Provence and soaking up the landscapes painted lovingly over and over by Paul Cezanne.

We walked down narrow country roads, climbed washed-out rocky footpaths and arrived on a ridge with a magnificent view overlooking the countryside and Cezanne's favorite subject -- Mont Sainte-Victoire, one of the world's most famous masses of limestone. Obscured even as it was by gray cloud cover, the mountain was impressive. Because of the way it dominates the land around it, Sainte-Victoire looks much grander than its 3,300 feet of elevation. And today it resembled a mammoth glacier in the fog.

We sat on the flat stones on the edge of the cliff, which was covered with brush and contorted Alep pines, listening to the wind and staring out in awe with the local guide who had led us up here.

"I've seen it illuminated, in the morning, in the afternoon and the evening," the guide, Stephane, who grew up around Aix and lives in a village at the base of the mountain, was saying in French. "And every time it's different -- it's magic."

On this day at this moment, some of the magic was missing -- namely, the Provencal light that turns the rock of Sainte-Victoire into a riot of color, shadows and shapes captured by Cezanne in more than 80 paintings. In the absence of color, my mind started filling in the blanks of the mountain's distinctive profile with greens and reds and blues and ochers, as if to turn nature into a work of art (or, more accurately, my coffee-table-book conception of Cezanne's work).

This year marks the centenary of Cezanne's death, which followed his final hike through the countryside to capture Sainte-Victoire (he was soaked in a thunderstorm and fell ill). That has refocused attention on not only the artist but the Aixois landscape that nourished him.

The exhibition "Cezanne in Provence," which opened at the National Gallery of Art in January and closes May 7, will cross the Atlantic to install itself June 9-Sept. 17 at the Musee Granet in Aix-en-Provence. With an explosion of belated appreciation, the Aix society that was cool to the master painter in life is welcoming the world to celebrate the Year of Cezanne.

Beginning this month, Cezanne's family estate, known as the Jas de Bouffan, is open for public tours for the first time. This is in addition to Cezanne's studio, which has been a site for art pilgrimages for a half-century. Beyond the museums and historic Cezanne sites is another destination for pilgrims: the Aix countryside and Sainte-Victoire, which in spite of wildfires and the creep of construction, has remained largely and recognizably as it was.

"This year," Stephane said, "people want to walk where Cezanne walked."

Tracking Cezanne

Tholonet, the tiny hamlet near Cezanne's country apartment, is a few minutes from downtown Aix. We had come earlier that morning -- my wife and 11-year-old son and I -- entering along a single road lined by a stand of plane trees and had found the large municipal petanque terrain being used by a dozen or so players. There is an old mill that now serves as a local museum, an 18th-century chateau and behind that, the arches of a ruined Roman aqueduct, a small church and a couple of restaurants.

Before we walked where Cezanne walked, we ate where Cezanne ate. Just about every business in the little towns around Sainte-Victoire manages to invoke the artist's name, but, according to the village's official history, Cezanne did eat often at Chez Madame Berne, where he dined on favorites such as duck in olives and thick beef stew. That local inn is now known as Le Relais Cezanne, a place whose outdoor tables straddle the local road and seem to take up a good part of downtown Tholonet.

When we arrived, workers on scaffolds were sanding the wood shutters, undoubtedly preparing for the onslaught of summer tourism. On this day it was too cold to eat outdoors, and after I gave a good hard shove on the front door, we entered a typical Provencal village dining room. Perhaps because the place was named after Cezanne, my eyes turned immediately to the walls, on which hung a collection of gloomy amateur paintings.

The prominent picture in the room, an oil of a shipwreck during a storm, dangled crookedly. I tried to straighten it but only made things worse. We were the first lunchtime customers that day, but after a few minutes, we were joined by about a dozen petanque players who filled the place with laughter and smoke. (Petanque has been called the national pastime of Provence -- the leisurely equivalent of Italian bocce, played with smaller metal balls and a small jack.)

After a lunch that could be described as decent in a rib-sticking way (I ordered a plate of pasta smothered in squid, washed down with red wine from the vineyards at the southern foot of Sainte-Victoire), we met up with Stephane, who led us to the edge of the town and into the woods.

The earth was vibrant red; wild rosemary and thyme were everywhere along the sides of the trail. And from time to time, as we climbed the hillside, Stephane would squat down next to patches of wildflowers: tiny wild orchids and narcissus, for example.

"In every season here there are flowers," he explained. "What makes this area special for me is the ambiance -- the smells, the wind, the different colors of green, the colors of the rock, everything."

Stephane, who has never lived far from Ste. Victoire, is the founder of Evana, a small mountain guide company that leads tours throughout Provence. Though he is not an art historian, through his walking in Cezanne's steps he's developed a great appreciation for the artist's work, as well as the mountain.

The path led us to a plateau of sand-colored stones cut in squared-off shapes. This, Stephane explained, whipping out a small Cezanne reproduction from the portfolio under his arm, was the back way into the abandoned Bibemus quarry. Its large cubes of cut stone had met Cezanne's brush to produce what art historians say were the precursors of cubist painting.

From the small Cezanne reproduction, little seemed to have changed. It was easy to understand why the artist was attracted to this intimate place. Small clearings were once made by stonecutters carving out boulders by hand. Their work left behind masses of yellow stone cubes, which have been covered over the centuries by vegetation and trees. If the place didn't exist, a painter would have had to invent it.

As we moved along the path through the quarry, we came upon a group of young men with white chalk on their hands who were staring at a boulder that stood about 15 feet tall. A video camera was perched on a tripod. The men each took turns approaching the boulder, one after the other scaling the side of it, toehold by toehold, fingertip by fingertip. The quarry, they explained, has become a sort of training center for rock climbers.

After that, Stephane led us to the plateau with his favorite vantage of Sainte-Victoire -- above the valley that inspired the artist's paintings of bathers. As we headed back down to Tholonet, I asked him how different groups react to this countryside.

"Americans come because of Cezanne," he said. "When you speak of love of Cezanne -- it's the Americans.

"The Swiss and Canadians like the nature," he continued. "And the Japanese -- they appreciate the mountain itself as a symbol. They have a culture in which the mountain is a symbol of the power of tranquility and wisdom."

As we arrived at Tholonet, the clouds parted, revealing blue sky. We approached the mountain from a closer vantage after a short drive and a walk of a couple of hundred yards. There we saw Sainte-Victoire transformed. In a matter of minutes, the stone had turned from a deep gray to almost white, with large bands of purple hues, patches of gold and red, and areas of shimmering green vegetation.

Along the jagged faces of the rock were large expanses that wore the patina created by ages of weathering: long dark streaks like dripping paint.

"When the sun hits the mountain, that's when the forms emerge," Stephane said. "In the morning it takes one form, in the afternoon another and in the evening another. It's like a living being."

To the Summit

To the people of Aix, Sainte-Victoire is a magnet; climbing to the top is a sort of rite of passage for children. Families take to the paths for Sunday picnics, rock climbers tackle its sheer southern faces in summer. For centuries, on certain feast days, Christian pilgrims have made their way to the summit topped by the large iron Cross of Provence.

A week after my first visit, I was drawn back to the mountain, this time to climb it -- a trek that takes about two hours on well-marked trails.

The most common and easiest way to climb Sainte-Victoire is from its gently sloping north side -- from a trailhead that is before the rustic village of Vauvenargues, which is dominated by a castle-estate that Picasso bought in the 1950s and where his remains are buried. (On making the purchase, Picasso famously boasted of buying "the original Sainte-Victoire by Cezanne.")

In fact, from this angle, Sainte-Victoire takes on an entirely different aspect from the imposing mountain that Cezanne painted from the west. From the northern side, Sainte-Victoire resembles a long, low chain of forested mountains -- with the back side of the summit sheltering a centuries-old chapel and priory built into the rock.

For this adventure, I recruited my good friend Daniel, a nature-loving French Alsatian. We set out in the morning on a pleasant spring day -- well-equipped with all one needs for a hike in the French countryside: sandwiches made with baguettes and plenty of water. Daniel even packed into his backpack a hot thermos of coffee and rolled-up seat cushions on which to repose.

The hike did not get off to a great start, however. At the trailhead of the GR-9 trail that leads to the summit, Daniel walked a few yards -- and stopped. He stared down at his shoes and cussed -- the rubber soles had fallen off!

In fact, Daniel had been given his "brand-new," expensive, name-brand hiking boots by a friend who'd blown out his knee and no longer had use for them. But somehow, during the time they'd rested in his friend's garage, the rubber and glue had dried out. And at this very moment, they were disintegrating.

After we recuperated from laughter, Daniel insisted on continuing with the trek -- meaning that he would have to walk on his boot's upper soles, made of fabric and a hair's width of rubber cushioning.

I was dubious. The peak looked a long way off, especially for someone who was wearing the equivalent of house slippers. Still, we rationalized, even modern slippers were probably better than the footwear of the Celto-Ligurian scouts who used Sainte-Victoire as a lookout in 300 B.C.

Luckily for Daniel, better than half the trail was an easy country road, wide enough for a Jeep. It climbed and snaked through forests of pine and live oaks and stands of wild olive trees. Then, just about an hour and 10 minutes into the walk, the path narrowed into a single-file track of rock and dirt that mounted toward the walls of bluish-tinted limestone through fragrant expanses of wild thyme and rosemary.

I nipped a few leaves and rubbed them between my fingers to smell. These wild plants, toughened by the elements and rocky mountain soil, release a concentrated explosion of perfume far more potent than any cultivated variety or store-bought herb.

Some 40 minutes later, after reaching the priory and its small chapel, we had worked up a sweat and were pared down to our T-shirts. We passed several other groups of hikers, already on their way down, who tended to be either young and fresh-faced or comfortably well into retirement.

We continued climbing the steep, staircaselike trail to the cross at the summit, and here we discovered one of the reasons for the bluish tone of the mountain. Up close, the rocks looked as though they had been painted with quarter-size dabs of blue paint -- actually a buildup of lichen. If the rocks of Sainte-Victoire look to be living things, it is because they are.

As we reached the final hump of the ridge, we were whipped by unsettling blasts of wind that howled around us. The temperature suddenly seemed to drop 20 degrees.

For the first time that day, we were able to look out on a 360-degree panorama of the Aix countryside and beyond. To the north was a line of snow-covered Alps; to the south, Marseilles and the sea.

The cross itself, erected in the early 1870s, stands about 62 feet tall. The central pillar and arms are each made of four iron tubes bound with a decorative thorn motif and braced against the elements with steel cables. The cross has had to be renovated and fortified numerous times against the violent mistral -- winds that periodically rip down from the Rhone Valley, wreaking havoc and chipping away at the foundation of the cross. Yet the same winds turn the skies of Provence one of the most limpid blues on Earth.

Each of the four sides of the monument bears an inscription in one of Provence's four historical languages. The side facing Aix is in Provencal; facing Paris, French; facing Marseilles, Greek; and facing Rome, Latin.

Cezanne is said to have been passionate about the history of his ancestral land, as well as a practicing Catholic. He was certainly obsessed with this mountain. Yet he never painted the cross; in fact, he edited it out of the landscape. Perhaps he thought little of this man-made monument, sitting up there so defiant against nature. Then again, he'd spent much of his own life building his own monument to Sainte-Victoire -- not from stone and metal, but with brush and paint.

Robert V. Camuto last wrote for Travel about Bolzano (Bozen), Italy.