条纹裙的塞尚夫人

The woman in the red chair is Hortense Fiquet, Cézanne's companion and, by the time he painted this around 1877, the mother of his young son. He kept her almost a secret. His father, a banker in Aix who controlled the money, did not know how serious the relationship was, and Cézanne needed the allowance, so Hortense stayed in the background of his life. In his work she is everywhere, and she sat for close to 30 portraits, more patiently than anyone. Here she does not smile or meet your eye, and the face is calm to the point of blankness. Look at how it is built, in dense little patches of colour laid side by side, with touches of green worked into the cheeks where an older painter would have put soft shadow. In 1877 Cézanne showed with the Impressionists in Paris, the critics singled him out for mockery, and he never exhibited with the group again.