Ritratto di Madame Cézanne

The sitter is Hortense Fiquet, who had been Cezanne's companion since the late 1860s and would sit for him perhaps 29 times over the years. For a long while he kept her hidden from his strict father in Aix, who held the purse and would have cut off his allowance had he known about her and their son. They finally married in 1886, around the time of pictures like this. Cezanne paints her the way he painted apples and mountains, held still under a steady, patient looking, her face built up plane by plane rather than flattered. She rarely smiles in these portraits. Here she simply sits, hands folded, while he works out the architecture of a head.