O negro Scipião

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.