Editing Paul Cézanne (section)

===Mature period, Provence, 1878–1890===
The "period of synthesis" followed, in which Cézanne completely broke away from the Impressionist style of painting. He solidified the forms by applying paint diagonally across the surface, eliminated the [[Perspective (graphical)|perspective]] representation to create the depth of the picture and directed his attention to the balance of the composition. During this period he increasingly created landscape and figure paintings. In a letter to his friend [[Joachim Gasquet]] he wrote: "The coloured surfaces, always the surfaces! The colourful place where the soul of the surfaces trembles, the prismatic warmth, the encounter of the surfaces in the sunlight. I design my surfaces with my shades on the palette, understand me! […] The areas must be clearly visible. Definitely [...] but they have to be distributed correctly, they have to flow into one another. Everything has to play together and yet create contrasts. It's all about the volume!"<ref name="Paul Cézanne"/>

[[File:Paul Cézanne - Boy in a Red Vest (Le Garçon au gilet rouge) - BF20 - Barnes Foundation.jpg|thumb|left|upright|''Boy with a Red Vest'', [[Barnes Foundation]], Philadelphia]]
The still lifes that Cézanne painted from the late 1880s are another focus of his work. He refrained from rendering the motifs in linear perspective and instead depicted them in the dimensions that made sense to him in terms of composition; a pear, for example, can be oversized in order to achieve inner balance and an exciting composition. He built his arrangements in the studio. In addition to the fruit, there are jugs, pots and plates, and occasionally a putto, often surrounded by a white, puffy tablecloth that lends the subject a baroque opulence. It is not the objects that should attract attention, but the arrangement of the shapes and colours on the surface.

Cézanne developed the composition from individual dabs of paint spread across the canvas, from which the form and volume of the object gradually build up. Achieving the balance of these patches of colour on the canvas required a slow process, so Cézanne often worked on a painting for a long time.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Becks-Malorny |title=Cézanne |page=55}}</ref> Initially only portraying family members or friends, Cézanne's better financial position allowed him to hire a professional model, a young Italian named Michelangelo di Rosa, for ''The Boy in the Red Vest'' (1888–1890), one of his best-known paintings. Di Rosa was represented in four paintings and two watercolours.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Adriani |title=Cézanne. Life and Work |page=88}}</ref>