• Shop
  • Blog
  • Tilted Sun
  • About
  • Links For You
Menu

Becky Jewell

art and comics
  • Shop
  • Blog
  • Tilted Sun
  • About
  • Links For You
×
cezanne portraits national gallery hallway 2018 washington dc.JPG

Cézanne Portraits at The National Gallery of Art - A Close Look

Becky Jewell July 3, 2018
cezanne early portrait uncle.JPG

This show opens with a little room full of early portraits of Cézanne's family. Cézanne's uncle acts as the star sitter, but also looks like a man who never planned on being painted. He seems to want to do his nephew a favor. It's hard to tell. Overall the uncle either has RBF or just can barely tolerate sitting still. 

cezanne thick oil painting portrait cezannes uncle washington dc.jpg
cezanne uncle portrait.JPG

These are Cézanne's earliest portraits, and by Cézanne's own standards they are incredibly weird Cézanne paintings, but stellar stand-alone paintings. I doubt that I would have been able to tell you that these are Cézanne's. Like Georgia O' Keefe's Kachina dolls, or Wyeth's Helga paintings - they're just really weird paintings compared to the rest of the painter's work. This weirdness or difference also makes these impasto portraits highly modern - the artist is allowed to grow and assume a different style in the next decade of his life. Cézanne eventually painted portraits and all of his work in a flat-brushed, unbodied way. 

cezanne uncle portrait .JPG
cezanne early portrait.JPG

You can see the air bubbles in each swipe of oil, and Cézanne lightly brushes surprising colors into the face - lime green, bright pink, magenta, and the sort of green that emerges when you mix black with too much white. This painting was the most unusual Cézanne I've ever seen - instead of lightness or airiness, it's black and stark. Instead of flat paint, it's heaped onto the canvas like butter. I really am not sure why Cézanne would have parted from this style other than that it is a difficult style (it's much easier to paint flat than thick) or that maybe the Uncle didn't like these portraits so much. 

cezanne early portrait impressionism.JPG

His eye sockets are convex, and his nose shines with a dab of white paint for added dimensionality. His mouth is utterly lost in his black beard. 

It's possible that the first gallery of this show was the most stunning, and every room after that contains the Cézanne we know and love, the same brilliant achievements but in Cézanne's more knowable style - self portraits, the artist's son, the artist's secret wife, the artist's unnamed gardener, the boy in the red waistcoat, a man in his study, and a man smoking. After those impasto early portraits of Cézanne's uncle, the rest of the show struck me as studied, collected, and interested in color over volume. 

cezanne portrait of a man in his study.JPG

In this portrait of a man in his study, the pages of the man's notebooks and tablets take on a life of their own, with multicolor swatches of paint composing the pages like a quilt. I doubt this man's accounting tables were actually so exciting or vibrant, but this is just what Cézanne does - he finds the color within the color.

cezanne books and pages detail.JPG

If the man's hand above were truly as blue as it is in the painting, we'd have to say that this was a very bruised hand. Instead, given the other dashes of color we are able to forgive the blueness of the hand. It's probably just a shadow of liberty. 

cezanne books and pages detail national gallery of art.JPG

Still, I couldn't get over the amount of color in white pages of books in the study portrait. In the pages on the right side of the photo above, to take inventory, we have pink, yellow, gray, teal, green, orange, blue, purple, and an edge of sienna. Who on Earth aside from Cézanne can see so many colors in a white page? For many impressionists, there was no using black. For Cézanne it seems to be no black and no gray. 

cezanne the smoker washington dc.JPG

This portrait, titled "The Smoker" strikes me as the most realistic of Cézanne's portraits, and possibly any of his works. The man's coat and hat seem to fit well. His hand, configured with accuracy, cradles his face. We have a stylistic quantum leap from the earlier portraits of Cézanne's uncle to this portrait. Black doesn't seem to touch this sitter - while his coat may have been black or dark brown, it is every color in the portrait below. 

cezanne the smoker detail.JPG

Blue, green, red, purple, orange, bright pink, gray, violet - these are all the colors of the smoker's coat. 

One of the more outstanding paintings outside of the first gallery was this self portrait: 

cezanne self portrait green blue background.JPG
cezanne self portrait seated detail.jpg

I'm not even sure what is happening with Cézanne's leg here - it's much like the tables where his still lives are placed. If you end up looking at Cézanne's leg instead of Cézanne's face, you sort of get confused, your brain gets lazy, and you have to go back to looking at Cézanne's face. The same mechanic happens with a Cézanne still life - if you look at the table, you're missing the nectarines. 

The placard outside of the portrait gallery encourages viewers to see the other Cézanne pieces in the National Gallery in addition to the portraits. The show's overall statement is also correct in assessing that Cézanne was probably better at painting fruit than faces, yet, I'll go to bat for Cézanne's ability to fill the human face with the same wild ranges of color as the nectarines. 

Here is a Cézanne from the permanent collection: 

cezanne still life national gallery of art.jpg
cezanne still life detail national gallery of art.JPG
cezanne peaches still life national gallery.JPG
cezanne peaches detail.JPG
cezanne peaches detail national gallery of art - cloth.JPG

Looking at just the cloth in this still life, we've seen this before. The blues, bright green, purple, gray, and pink were also in the faces of Cézanne's portraits. For Cézanne, painting is a matter of how many colors you can see in a gray area.

Tags paul cezanne, national gallery of art, painting, impressionions, many colors, color theory, still life, portaits, oil painting, french oil painting
← Washington D.C., Virginia, Yellow Line Metro DrawingsA close look at the van Gogh paintings of The National Gallery of Art →

Art, comics travel, books, life! Welcome to my blog!

xoxo

Becky

Visit the shop!

becky jewell artist leadville.png

Subscribe

Sign up for my newsletter and stay up to date on my latest projects, shows, and thoughts on life.

We respect your privacy.

Thank you!
Clip Studio Paint - Shop Now!
  • May 2025
  • March 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • March 2022
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • December 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
Clip Studio Paint - Shop Now!


View more cats by visiting my portfolio!

Liquid Memory
Portfolio

About

You’ve scrolled down far enough to see this image of a dude polishing a server rack!

server guy.png
Clip Studio Paint - Shop Now!