Paul Cézanne

This c. 1875 painting entitled Self-Portrait, Rose Ground by Paul Cézanne was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Made a decade after Cézanne's first, scowling self-portrait nearby, this more sober picture features his prematurely balding head, which would become one of his signature motifs. The poet Rainer formed as Maria Rilke described it as a “powerful structure ... though by hammering from within.” Cézanne was by this time working closely with the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, whose bright palette and broken brushwork influenced his technique in the early 1870s.  -- NGA