Scipio the Negro

Cézanne painted this around 1867, in his twenties, not long after he came to Paris and joined the Académie Suisse, an informal studio where anyone could draw from a live model for a small fee. The man here, known as Scipion, posed there. Cézanne worked fast and thick, the paint pushed on almost with a palette knife, the bent back and dark red cloth built out of heavy strokes. Claude Monet later owned the canvas and hung it in his own bedroom, calling it a piece of the first strength, high praise from a careful judge of painting. From Monet it passed to his son, then to dealers, and eventually to the art museum of São Paulo in Brazil.