Antony Valabrègue

In the spring of 1866 the Salon jury in Paris was turning away work by the crateful, and this canvas was among the refused. Cézanne, not yet 30, had laid the paint on with a palette knife, a tool meant for mixing rather than painting, building the face of his friend out of thick dark ridges. Antony Valabrègue was a young poet and critic from Aix, the town where the two had grown up together. One juror is said to have muttered that the portrait was painted not with a knife but with a pistol. That same season another Aix friend, the writer Émile Zola, was firing off reviews in the press on behalf of the rejected. Look closely at the cheeks and collar and you can still see the trowelled edges standing up off the surface.