Le Fumeur accoudé

The man with the pipe was called Paulin Paulet, and he worked as a gardener and handyman on the Jas de Bouffan, the country estate outside Aix that belonged to Cezanne's family. Around 1890 Cezanne began paying him five francs a session to sit, and Paulet posed many times, leaning here on a table, hat on, pipe in mouth, in no hurry. Cezanne builds the whole figure from broad, deliberate planes of colour, the same slow method he brought to his apples and his mountains. He came from Aix himself and felt an easy closeness to these local working men. Two more versions of the solitary smoker survive, one in Saint Petersburg and one in Moscow. The same models, Paulet among them, sat for Cezanne's celebrated card players in these very years.