Portrait of Peasant

In his final years, back home near Aix-en-Provence, Cezanne kept painting the same quiet, weathered man. He was a local gardener and handyman named Vallier who worked at the artist's hillside studio, and he sat for Cezanne over and over, in oils and in watercolour. The two old men were easy together. Vallier is said to have been the only person the prickly painter, who could not bear to be touched, would allow near him. Cezanne worked outdoors whenever the weather held. In October 1906 a storm caught him at his easel and he collapsed, then got up the next morning to go on with a portrait of this same gardener. He died a few days later.