Chapter Sixty Seven - "Cézanne's Portraits"

On Saturday, 11^th November, I took a trip into London to visit a highly acclaimed and hugely anticipated art exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Having recently seen a personal glimpse into the life and times of Matisse at the Royal Academy, it was fitting that I should next visit the showing of Paul Cézanne’s portraits, an aspect of his art most personal, but most overlooked. Cézanne (1839-1906) focused on forms with colour, and employed an analytical approach to his work, frequently composing complimentary pairs of works. His sitters were generally those close to him – his father, son, wife and uncle. This exhibition would incorporate over fifty portraits from across the world, some never before displayed in the UK.

Cézanne inherited the rudimentary understanding that a portrait should provide a physical and psychological likeness to the sitter. However, he eventually came to regard his portraits as a mere representation of the thing regarded, nothing more. He aimed to show the sitter in a matter-of-fact way without urging the viewer to consider any subtext.

As such, Cézanne refused to adhere to the conventions of making men look powerful or important, or women beautiful or seductive. He refused to be flattering and often painted those who did not expect it. Tough and unflattering, Cézanne was regarded in his home of Aix-en-Provence and in Paris as someone as combative in art as in his personal behaviour.

Some subjects were conceived as a series, with one work after another of the same sitter. He became notorious for taking a long time to paint a portrait, or for not finishing them at all, and in some cases destroying them. Cézanne never accepted commissions or payment, and only his dealer Vollard received his own portrait. With few exceptions Cézanne painted only himself, family and friends, and the locals of Aix.

The exhibition opened with ‘The Artist’s Father, Reading’ (1866). Cézanne’s father was a respectable financier, and this portrait shows him relaxing with a periodical. This work was painted in Cézanne’s manière couillarde (“ballsy manner”), with a thick application of paint, unusually applied with a palette knife. It is believed that Cézanne was influenced by Gustave Courbet, who was known to use a palette knife, albeit to a lesser extent. Cézanne had a difficult relationship with his father in his early years. Although his father supported him, he would rather Cézanne had followed in the family footsteps as a lawyer.

Cézanne’s ‘Self Portrait’ (1862-4) was painted when he was twenty two years of age, and was modelled on a photograph. The figure fixes the viewer uncomfortably with an intense gaze, the pallid flesh and the striking blood red accents hinting at a troubling nature, possibly associated with the scenes of violence which Cézanne was also painting at this time. The expression, however, is open to interpretation.

Cézanne’s earliest paintings date from 1860, when he was twenty years old. These included some allegories, still life, and landscapes, but only the occasional portrait. It was in 1866 that he truly began to focus on portraiture and his artistic voice was found. He preferred to only paint those around whom he felt comfortable, explaining why so many early works focus on family and close friends. By the end of the 1860s Cézanne began to move away from his earlier combative approach, and his work became more refined.

Cézanne painted his friend Anthony Valabrègue twice, in 1866 and 1869-70. The first painting shows Valabrègue as a harsh and brooding character. This was Cézanne’s first attempt at a salon piece, but it was rejected due to his unorthodox painting style with the palette knife. The harsh, brooding presentation of the sitter also led to a perception of supressed rape and murder, akin to his other works of this time. The second portrait shows Valabrègue as a more benign sitter, with much of the harshness removed, due to the use of a brush as well as the knife.

In 1866 Cézanne’s portraits were often constructed entirely using a palette knife – his aforementioned manière couillarde, a crude technique. He would start by laying down a substantial foundation of homogenous colour, then completing his painting by following a step by step construction with similar patches of paint.

Cézanne’s serial approach is probably best known in his landscapes such as Mont-Saint-Victoire, but this began in his portraiture of 1866-67 with his Uncle Dominique. He painted his uncle whilst living on his father’s estate in Aix, again painting with his palette knife with the confidence of one plastering a wall. Uncle Dominique was thus dressed in various outfits, to convey different personas. Cézanne was quoted as writing to artist Camille Pissarro, saying “I’m here in the bosom of my family, with the foulest people on Earth who make up my family”, which helps to explain why he now chose to paint his maternal uncle. His friend, novelist Emile Zola urged him to take a more business-like approach with his work, and this was reflected here in the style of painting. Cézanne also painted his sister Marie and his mother at this time, wiping his paintbrush off on his sister’s portrait, as he worked on his mother’s figure on the reverse of the canvas. 

Fortuné Marion (1846-1900), who would go on to become the director of the Museum of Natural History in Marseilles, was painted by Cézanne in 1871, using a thickly loaded brush. A keen geologist, he would often go into the countryside with Cézanne, painting together and collecting rock specimens. It can be said that Cézanne’s friendship with Fortuné Marion greatly enhanced his love of the landscape of Provence.

In 1869 Cézanne met Hortense Fiquet, when he was thirty and she barely nineteen. They began living together the following year and had a son, Paul, in 1872. However, Cézanne kept this secret from his father for fear of losing his monthly allowance, which as his paintings were not selling well, was all he had to live on.

In 1886, Cézanne married Hortense and she became Madame Cézanne, and their son Paul was legitimised. As a couple, they often lived apart, and Hortense was patronised by Cézanne’s family and friends, and treated in a hostile, misogynistic manner by critics and art historians. Despite this, she became Cézanne’s most common subject of portraiture and their relationship was the closest that Cézanne had in his life. The twenty eight or twenty nine paintings that Cézanne painted of her, over twenty years comprise a sympathetic inventory of her changing appearance, allowing a systematic analysis of her across his painting styles – singles, pairs and trios. Their early intimacy is conveyed through the rich choice of colours, and touch. Cézanne’s second portrait of Hortense Fiquet is unusual as it depicts her engaged in an activity (sewing), rather than simply sitting for him, which was usual. This also hints at their closeness.

In 1875 Cézanne returned to self-portraiture, with a pair of portraits, the first of which was painted in the Paris studio of impressionist painter Armand Guillaumin. The background accurately reflects the feel of the studio, with another painting displayed, consistent with Cézanne’s phrase, “I paint as I see”. The first painting depicts Cézanne in a wild, unkempt and unflattering manner, but this disappears with its counterpart.

Cézanne’s friend Victor Choquet was the most prolific collector of his work, and the two shared a passion for the art of Delacroix. Cézanne painted Victor Choquet in 1877 in Choquet’s Paris apartment, at the same time as he first painted Hortense. Unusually, Cézanne shows us the floor, something he only did on seven or eight occasions in over one hundred and sixty painted portraits. The bright colours and life expressed in the painting reflects their strong friendship, despite the facial expressions not being clearly seen.

Despite living apart from his wife and son for much of his life, Cézanne doted on his son, Paul (1872-1947). He keenly charted his early life through his sketchbooks.  A painting of Paul, ‘The Artist’s Son’ (c.1880) at the age of ten years old is one of Cézanne’s most carefully composed works, almost minimalist in appearance, and one of two finished portraits of his son. In the early years Cézanne painted no other child subjects, and although there are no adult portraits of him, Cézanne remained close to him, practically and emotionally, all his life.

In the early 1880s Cézanne composed self portraits with more careful, ‘constructive brushstrokes’. Paint would be applied in parallel, usually in a diagonal direction across facial features, figures and ground alike – evoking the previous palette knife technique from 1860s, but now much more systematic and controlled. The paintings reflect a calmer nature, influenced perhaps by his father’s now warmer approach to his son’s paintings.

In the spring of 1886, Hortense Fiquet became Madame Cézanne. Compared to her previous portraits, we now see her as a more vulnerable and delicate woman. Here Cézanne also abandons his previous thinking, and begins to show something of the personal feelings of his subjects. However, the precise interpretation in this case is hard to determine – as Cézanne probably intended. 

In 1885-6 Cézanne painted his self portraits in Bowler hats, now in his late forties. Only two portraits show Cézanne wearing a Bowler hat, although it would become his favoured headwear in later years. Some scholars have seen this as a reference to his father’s beginnings in hat-making, or Cézanne’s own ascent into the bourgeoisie through marriage, but these works may actually show someone who is wary, distrustful and irritable, conveyed through the tight-lipped face, mirroring the end of a difficult period of his life.

In the second half of the 1880s, namely 1886-7, Cézanne painted thirty four portraits, of which half were focused on his wife. This presents us with the most continuous examination of facial features which he ever made, and advances the serial work which he started with his Uncle Dominique in 1866-7. However, now these portraits are more explicit in their description of emotion. The portraits of Hortense in a blue dress are unflattering and provide a more neutral character, devoid of expression. This may have been influenced by her melancholy through geographical separation from her husband, a sadness which was shared by Cézanne himself.

In 1888-90 Cézanne painted Hortense in a red dress. As before, her face is expressionless and set in a perfected oval. She casts an imposing figure, solid and firm amidst the instability of the room around her, as demonstrated through the various angled lines. These were painted in Paris, shortly before they moved back to Aix.

The ’Boy in a Red Waistcoat’ (1888-90), Michelangelo de Rosa, was of a similar age to Cézanne’s son, Paul. This work was influenced by sixteenth centrury Florentine painters, such as Bronzino and Pontormo, whose paintings Cézanne would have known from studying the Old Masters in the Louvre.

In the early 1890s Cézanne and his wife drifted apart, and he looked for new subjects for his portraits. He settled on the ordinary folk in Aix – agricultural labourers, domestic servants and even some children. He particularly admired the older residents of Provence for not changing their ways or conforming to the fashions of the times, something he had grown to dislike from his Paris days. His eye to children, after 1895, is possibly explained by his increasing personal awareness of old age.

In the later half of the decade, Cézanne painted a new type of subject. On the back of a successful solo exhibition in 1895, he began to paint his art-world admirers. He struggled greatly with this, however, and even set aside some almost finished works. One, of Alfred Hauge, a young painter (1899) was slashed in anger – Cézanne’s son later had it repaired in Paris.

His two portraits, ‘Woman with a Cafetière’ (1895) and ‘Portrait of Gustave Geffroy’ (1895-6), to whom he was introduced by Monet, depicted subjects against a detailed background. Although ambitious, this approach would not be repeated.

Cézanne entered the twentieth century as a celebrated artist. People were taking an increased interest in his works and exhibitions, and young painters and critics came to his studio in Aix to learn from his experience. He was particularly isolated at this time, rarely seeing his wife or son. His accounts were managed by his sister, Marie.

Of the hundred works painted at the start of the twentieth century, a fifth were portraits, again local workers, but with a return to those close to him – notably his sister Marie and his gardener, Vallier.

Cézanne painted almost daily, right up to the eve of his death, aged sixty seven on 23^rd October 1906. His final self portrait c.1900, depicts a fragile, prematurely aged, but vehement figure – a representation of presence, rather than likeness, with no hint of self-pity.

Cézanne’s final works were those of his gardener and general help, Vallier. Unusually, he painted some outside, preparing himself for these works through studies in watercolour, so as to achieve the desired combination of warm and cool tones. In contrast, his indoor works in oil paints reverted back to the dark, dense style of his earlier portraits, and gave a meditative effect on mortality through the thick encrusted nature of the paint. It has been said that when Vallier could not sit for him, Cézanne would wear the gardener’s hat and coat and continue his work in a mirror, thus blurring the identities of the old working man and the old artist, to create his truly final self portraits.