Boy With a Straw Hat

By 1896 Cezanne had been painting for more than 30 years with almost no public. That had just changed. In the autumn of 1895 the dealer Ambroise Vollard hung around 150 of his canvases in a small shop on the rue Laffitte in Paris, the first solo exhibition Cezanne ever had, and younger painters began making the trip south to find him.

The boy here has never been identified. Cezanne worked mostly from people he could keep still, family, gardeners, local men, because he painted slowly and over many sittings. Vollard, who sat for him a few years later, counted well over a hundred sessions and remembered being told to hold himself like an apple, since an apple does not move.

The canvas is about 69 by 58 centimetres. It came to Los Angeles with the collection of George Gard De Sylva, the songwriter and film producer who worked as Buddy DeSylva.