Potrait of Madame Cezanne
(Portrait de Madame Cézanne)
1885-1890
Paul CÉZANNE
1839 – 1906
Oil on canvas
Cézanne painted Hortense Ficquet many times during their long relationship.
They met in Paris in 1869, when she was a nineteen-year-old model and he a
thirty-year-old aspiring artist. He hid her existence from his disapproving
father, despite the birth of their son in 1872. When his father discovered the
family in 1876, he cut Cézanne’s allowance. The pair married finally in 1886,
with parental approval. This small portrait was made around this time, although
it appears strangely impersonal, considering the couple’s tumultuous personal
circumstances. But then, the personality of his subjects concerned Cézanne very
little, as he investigated the outer forms rather than the psychological
experience of his sitter.
The subject looks into the middle distance, without meeting our gaze. She is
presented very close to the viewer, but is restrained both in pose and
expression. We see simple forms, an oval face on a cylindrical neck and
triangular torso, with a very restricted colour palette. Almost everything is
pale or hardly coloured: light pink skin, dark brown hair, light blue dress and
background divided strictly between light blue-grey on the right, and a
yellow-brown at the left. The sitter’s face is slightly tilted. There is no
signal of close personal ties, and little expression on her face; indeed hardly
any indication of femininity at all. Her hair is parted severely in the centre,
and appears almost to be painted on, like a wooden doll.
Cézanne builds up volume on the head and neck with subtle tones of darker
hues. Black outlines the planes of the shirt, dividing flesh from fabric, and
sitter from ground. The planes of the background are imaginary anyway, as no
walls meet at the top, and then disappear further down. Instead we look at the
artistic truth of the composition, the calmness and beauty of the reduced
elements of the painting. Portrait of Madame Cézanne belonged to Henri
Matisse, and was in his possession until his death in 1954. He admired the
‘atmosphere of the serenity of life [which] radiates from the portrait … saying
he wanted to endow his own work with a magnificent stillness’.1
An anecdote related by Ambroise Vollard hints at another truth. While sitting
for his portrait by Cézanne, Vollard moved, and Cézanne ‘flew into a rage’,
saying: ‘I told you to keep as still as an apple. Does an apple
fidget?’2 Madame Cézanne, it seems, in her
perfection as a subject, did not.
They met in Paris in 1869, when she was a nineteen-year-old model and he a
thirty-year-old aspiring artist. He hid her existence from his disapproving
father, despite the birth of their son in 1872. When his father discovered the
family in 1876, he cut Cézanne’s allowance. The pair married finally in 1886,
with parental approval. This small portrait was made around this time, although
it appears strangely impersonal, considering the couple’s tumultuous personal
circumstances. But then, the personality of his subjects concerned Cézanne very
little, as he investigated the outer forms rather than the psychological
experience of his sitter.
The subject looks into the middle distance, without meeting our gaze. She is
presented very close to the viewer, but is restrained both in pose and
expression. We see simple forms, an oval face on a cylindrical neck and
triangular torso, with a very restricted colour palette. Almost everything is
pale or hardly coloured: light pink skin, dark brown hair, light blue dress and
background divided strictly between light blue-grey on the right, and a
yellow-brown at the left. The sitter’s face is slightly tilted. There is no
signal of close personal ties, and little expression on her face; indeed hardly
any indication of femininity at all. Her hair is parted severely in the centre,
and appears almost to be painted on, like a wooden doll.
Cézanne builds up volume on the head and neck with subtle tones of darker
hues. Black outlines the planes of the shirt, dividing flesh from fabric, and
sitter from ground. The planes of the background are imaginary anyway, as no
walls meet at the top, and then disappear further down. Instead we look at the
artistic truth of the composition, the calmness and beauty of the reduced
elements of the painting. Portrait of Madame Cézanne belonged to Henri
Matisse, and was in his possession until his death in 1954. He admired the
‘atmosphere of the serenity of life [which] radiates from the portrait … saying
he wanted to endow his own work with a magnificent stillness’.1
An anecdote related by Ambroise Vollard hints at another truth. While sitting
for his portrait by Cézanne, Vollard moved, and Cézanne ‘flew into a rage’,
saying: ‘I told you to keep as still as an apple. Does an apple
fidget?’2 Madame Cézanne, it seems, in her
perfection as a subject, did not.
