Portrait de paysan (Portrait of a Peasant)

By the late 1890s Cézanne, settled back in Aix-en-Provence, had grown close to the Félibrige, a movement of writers reviving the language and traditions of Provence. His young friend the poet Joachim Gasquet was part of it. Like them, Cézanne came to revere the farm people of the region, who in his eyes still carried the old ways of the south. Here he gives an unnamed local man, who may have worked for him as a gardener, the pose he had once used for the collector Victor Chocquet and for his dealer Ambroise Vollard. The man sits upright, legs crossed, his large hands folded in his lap. A black ribbon tie against the blue coat and waistcoat lends him a certain formality, and the heavy coat and hat suggest the sittings took place in late autumn or winter.