The Battle of Love

Paul Cezanne

National Gallery of Art

Painted with loose, visible brushstrokes mostly in shades of spring green, sky blue, straw yellow, and ivory white, four couples lock in intense embraces across a landscape in front of a body of water in this nearly square painting. Trees rise up and off the top edges to both sides of the canvas, and a band of green grass runs across the width. Just beyond, a body of pale blue water extends to the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Off-white clouds swirl against the topaz-blue sky above. Three pairs of people are spaced evenly across the grass, close to us, and the fourth pair are on a steep rise to our right. The people all have pale or slightly peachy skin, and most of them have honey-yellow hair. The painting technique is loose throughout, making many details, especially facial features and some body parts, indistinct. Near the lower left corner, a nude person crouches on the ground with an arm raised overhead while another person, nude except for a few swipes of brick red to suggest a cape, stands above with one arm raised. At the center of the painting, two people with long, blond hair seem to embrace, though the one farther from us is partially or wholly lifted off the ground. To our right, a tanned person kneels over a pale, nude woman with rounded breasts and hips. Their heads blend together, possibly to suggest that they kiss, and one of them has black hair. They hold hands locked overhead. Dark gray strokes nearby in the lower right corner of the painting suggest a dog leaping at this couple. The fourth pair is on a sand-colored rise, about halfway up the right edge of the composition. They are even more loosely painted, but one person seems to grab onto the other as they tip toward the ground or water below.