Portrait de l'artiste au fond rose

Cezanne painted this around 1875, a year after he had hung three canvases in the first Impressionist exhibition and been singled out by the Paris critics for special mockery. You would not guess that from the man looking back at you. There is no drama here, no artist's costume, no brush held up for show, just a balding, watchful figure in a plain coat against a flat pink wall. That warm pink is unusual for him. In most of his self-portraits he set himself against the ordinary patterned wallpaper of a rented room and let its repeats organise the space behind his head. He made around 25 self-portraits across nearly 50 years, and in none of them does he flatter himself. Here he has turned his head slightly aside, giving the wary, sidelong look that runs through almost all of them.