Gardener (Le Jardinier)

Gardener (1885) at the Barnes Foundation depicts a working figure in the Provençal landscape, one of a series of figure studies Cézanne made of laborers at the Jas de Bouffan estate. Unlike the Bathers who inhabit a timeless classical space, the gardener is embedded in the specific Provençal landscape around Aix-en-Provence. Cézanne painted relatively few contemporary figures outside his portraits and card players; these gardener subjects are unusual in showing the working-class laborer as a dignified monumental presence in the landscape, treating the human figure with the same structural seriousness as geological form.

The gardener's figure is built with the same diagonal, planar strokes that Cézanne applies to landscape. The human form is simplified into geometric volumes—cylindrical torso, rounded head—without loss of characteristic presence. The Provençal landscape around the figure uses warm ochres and greens in systematic structural notation.