Madame Cézanne no jardim

The woman is Hortense Fiquet, Cézanne's companion and by far his most painted model. He gave her the same still, blank expression in all two dozen or so of her portraits. When he made this around 1880 she was still not his wife. Cézanne was keeping her and their young son hidden from his stern, wealthy father in Aix, who held the purse strings and knew nothing of them, and he would only marry her in 1886. For once he set her full length and out of doors, which he seldom did, preferring tight indoor framings. He left the canvas unfinished, the lower part barely touched, so the pale priming still shows through along the bottom.