Madame Cézanne im gelben Sessel

The woman is Hortense Fiquet, whom Cézanne had met in Paris in the 1860s when she modelled for him, and who sat for close to 30 of his portraits over the years. They had a son in 1872 and only married in 1886, a couple of years before this was painted. Cézanne worked slowly and demanded long, motionless sittings, and Hortense's calm, faintly withdrawn expression here is partly the look of someone holding still for a very long time. He was not really after her mood in any case. The face, the sloped shoulders and the yellow chair are all weighed and fitted together like the parts of a still life, the head tilted slightly to answer the tilt of her body. It is one of a small group he made of her in that chair.