A Painter at Work

In the early 1870s Cézanne spent long stretches painting outdoors beside Camille Pissarro, his older friend, in the villages of Pontoise and Auvers north of Paris. In the spring of 1874 both of them hung work in the first exhibition of the group that critics soon nicknamed the Impressionists.

This small picture, painted around that time, makes the outdoor habit its subject. A man sits on the grass with his back to us, working, while the field and trees around him are laid down in quick strokes of yellow, green and blue. Some writers have taken him for Pissarro. The museum's title offers another name, Justin Gabet, a cabinetmaker from Aix-en-Provence and a childhood friend of the Cézanne family, and adds a question mark. That guess has a practical basis. The painting belonged to Gabet in Aix until the dealer Ambroise Vollard bought it in 1904.