"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Monday, February 10, 2020

Paul Cézanne


This 1862-1864 self-portrait of Paul Cézanne, belonging to a private collection, hung in a Cézanne exhibit in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Cézanne painted his first self-portrait from a photograph taken when he was twenty-two. He co-opted the matter-of-factness of the photograph, but rather than simply reproducing it, he created an intense portrait in which his face looms out of the darkness. Blood-red accents and dark lines under eyes that glare in slightly different directions heighten the vehemence of the expression.
Wikipedia has this 1861 photo of  Cézanne.


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