The Hanged Man's House
A cluster of old stone houses on a slope at Auvers-sur-Oise — the picture with which Cézanne turned towards Impressionism, painted beside Pissarro.
Auvers-sur-Oise
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
The Hanged Man's House — at a glance
- Artist
- Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
- Year
- 1873
- Movement
- Impressionism / Post-Impressionism
- Place
- Auvers-sur-Oise, north-west of Paris
- Viewpoint
- A sloping village lane — the house and lane survive and are signposted in Auvers
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 55 × 66 cm
- Now at
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Overview
The Hanged Man's House is the best-known landscape of Paul Cézanne's early maturity, painted in 1873 at Auvers-sur-Oise. It shows a steep, rough lane between thick-walled stone cottages with sagging roofs, opening onto a sunlit valley with more village roofs beyond. It is oil on canvas, about 55 by 66 cm, and it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Cézanne showed it at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
The story behind the painting
Scholarship In 1872–74 Cézanne lived at Auvers and nearby Pontoise and worked alongside Camille Pissarro, who taught him to lighten his palette, paint outdoors and build form with small touches rather than heavy dark masses. The Hanged Man's House marks that shift. The morbid name is old local usage for the property and does not refer to any event Cézanne witnessed.
Where was The Hanged Man's House painted?
Scholarship Auvers-sur-Oise is a village on the river Oise about 30 km north-west of Paris, a magnet for painters — Daubigny, Pissarro, Cézanne, and later Van Gogh, who is buried there. The house and the sloping lane Cézanne painted still exist, on the rue Daubigny / chemin des Vessenots area of the village, and Auvers marks its painters' motifs with signboards; the framing can be broadly matched, though trees and walls have changed.
What is in the painting?
A bare earth track drops away between two heavy stone houses that lean towards each other, their thatched or tiled roofs patched and mossy. The left house is cut by the frame; a gap between them shows a bright green-and-ochre valley with scattered roofs and a low hill. There are no figures. The paint is dense and built up, especially in the walls and roofs.
Look closely
The leaning houses
Two thick-walled stone cottages tilt towards each other over the track, roofs patched and mossy.
The gap to the valley
Between the houses, a bright wedge of green-and-ochre valley with scattered roofs.
The built-up paint
The walls and roofs are worked in dense, deliberate touches — early ‘constructive’ Cézanne.
No people
The lane is empty; the subject is entirely the structure of the place.
Analysis
Composition and technique
Massive close-up houses frame a plunging gap to a sunlit distance — solid, blocky construction rather than atmosphere.
Scholarship Cézanne wedges the two house-masses against the picture edges and drives the lane down and back between them to the bright valley, so the design is built from a few large interlocking planes. The touch is heavier and more deliberate than Pissarro's, already looking towards Cézanne's later constructive brushwork.
Colour and light
Warm ochre and grey stone and thatch against fresh valley greens, in clear daylight.
The palette has lightened from Cézanne's dark early work: sunlit ochre and cream walls, grey-brown roofs, green and gold fields in the gap, a pale sky. Shadows are coloured, not black.
History & provenance
Shown in 1874, the painting was bought by Count Doria, later acquired by the collector Count Isaac de Camondo, and given with his collection to the French state; it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Sources
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris — collection entry for Paul Cézanne, ‘La Maison du pendu, Auvers-sur-Oise’ (1873; oil on canvas, c. 55 × 66 cm; Camondo bequest)
- John Rewald, ‘The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné’
Related paintings
More by Paul Cézanne
Pont de Maincy
Also connected to Auvers-sur-Oise
The Church at Auvers
Doctor Gachet's Garden in Auvers
