Search results
During the recent Portraiture Experiments teen event here at the Met, we explored Cézanne's techniques and deciphered their coherence. We explored the fact that although all the paintings were of the same woman, her facial features change from work to work.
Portrait of a Woman. Paul Cézanne French. 1902–1906. Not on view. Here, only a few dark lines dashed over a faint chalk sketch and added patches of color define the motif. Like a number of Cézanne’s works from the last years of his life, this painting was left in a seemingly unfinished state.
The next logical development after this elegant, smooth and delicate portrait could only be a woman's head by Brancusi. The magnificent, subtle nuances of the colours of the face and of the surroundings are complemented by the purity of the lines.
Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in a Red Dress. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 826. Of the four portraits that Cézanne painted of his wife wearing a shawl-collared red dress, this is the only one to show her in an elaborately furnished interior.
Cézanne Portraits. Paul Cézanne, Uncle Dominique in Smock and Blue Cap, 1866–1867, oil on canvas, Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wolfe Fund, 1951; acquired from The Museum of Modern Art, Lillie P. Bliss Collection (53.140.1) , 1880–1881, oil on canvas, The National Gallery, London.
Despite this proximity, Woman with a Coffeepot is a study of forms rather than character. The main elements in the composition – the woman's body, the cup and the coffeepot – are painted in a highly simplified way in a strict arrangement of horizontal and vertical lines.
Hortense Fiquet, Cézanne’s mistress, model, and later wife, was far from an inanimate object. The assertive thrust of her jaw, the circular patterns of her brocade jacket, and her shoulder suggest she was not a passive recipient of the painter’s gaze.
