Self Portrait

By 1880 Paul Cézanne had quietly stopped showing his work with the Impressionists. He was around 40, with a family to support, and spending more of his time back south in Provence, away from the Paris art world. He painted this self-portrait in those years, and it has none of the heat of his younger ones. He looks out steadily, a little remote, more interested in structure than in drama. Look closely at the dull olive-green wallpaper behind him. Cézanne picks up its faint pattern and echoes those shapes across his jacket and even the shadows of his head, so that the man and the room seem built from the same handful of colours.