Antony Valabrègue

1866

Paul Cezanne

Artist, French, 1839 - 1906

A light-skinned man with thick black hair and a squared off black beard, dressed in a black jacket over a gray vest and gray trousers, sits facing us in this vertical portrait painting. This work is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes so some details are difficult to make out. The man's body faces us but he looks down and to our left. The tip of his nose almost matches the coral red of his lips. Two pale peach patches below his mouth break up his beard on his pointed chin. His hands, closed into fists, rest on his thighs, which are cropped by the bottom of the canvas. He wears several layers of clothing. The open black jacket reveals a charcoal-gray vest with a V-shaped opening over another black garment, perhaps an undervest. This is worn over a white shirt, which is visible as bright traingles at this throat and white cuffs at his wrists. The white shirt seems to be tied with a black tie and possibly a gray cravat, but this area is broadly painted. The background is painted with gray strokes over black. The artist signed the painting in black paint in the lower right corner, though it is barely visible: “P. Cezanne.”

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Working diligently to find his artistic voice in the first decade of his career, Cézanne often prevailed upon friends and relatives to act as models in his studio on the family estate in Aix-en-Provence. The poet and art historian Antony Valabrègue, who grew up with Cézanne in Aix, sat for the young artist several times in the 1860s.

Cézanne chose a fairly conventional format for this portrait—a three-quarter-length figure with face turned slightly to the side, and plain backdrop—but he executed it in a wholly radical manner. He eschewed the precise delineation of form, evidenced especially along the edges of the coat, where black pigment spills onto the gray of the background. Even more strikingly, he used a palette knife—a blunt instrument normally used to mix paint—to apply thick layers of pigment, achieving a ferocious, even crude effect seen, most obviously, in Valabrègue’s face. Even where the artist used a brush to form the tightly clenched fists, for instance, the handling is raw and turbulent.

As Cézanne eagerly anticipated, the work was rejected by the Salon of 1866. Thus he proudly joined the ranks of other insurgent artists who failed to get into the Salon that year, including Edouard Manet and Auguste Renoir.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 90

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 116.3 x 98.4 cm (45 13/16 x 38 3/4 in.)
    framed: 144.8 × 127 × 12.7 cm (57 × 50 × 5 in.)

  • Accession

    1970.35.1

More About this Artwork

Article:  1874: The Birth of Impressionism

Discover how a landmark exhibition led to the birth of an influential movement.

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Ambroise Vollard [1866-1939], Paris); sold 26 March 1901 to Breysse; resold 1904 to Vollard; sold 1911 through (Bernheim-Jeune) to Auguste Pellerin [1852-1929], Paris;[1] by inheritance to his son, Jean-Victor Pellerin, Paris, until at least 1946.[2] private collection, Zürich. (Wildenstein & Co., London, New York, and Paris), at least in 1947;[3] sold 1966 to Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1970 to NGA.
[1] On the painting's early provenance, see John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996: no. 94.
[2] The painting was still in the Pellerin collection according to John Rewald, History of Impressionism, New York, 1946: 120.
[3] The painting was lent by Wildenstein's to a 1947 exhibition.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1907

  • 22nd Exhibition of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts: French Impressionists [Katalog triadvacáté výstavy Spolku Výtvarných Umĕlců Mánes: Francouzšti Impressionisté], Mánes Pavilion, Prague, 1907, no. 53.

1909

  • [Group exhibition], Paul Cassierer, Berliln, 1909, possibly no. 9.

1910

  • Exhibition of the Works of Modern French Artists, Public Art Galleries, Brighton, England, 1910, no. 184.

1912

  • Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 1912, no. 51.

1938

  • Honderd Jaar Fransche Kunst, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1938, no. 3.

1939

  • Homage to Paul Cézanne. Wildenstein & Co., London, 1969, no. 6.

  • [Exhibition], Musée de Lyon, 1939, no. 7.

1947

  • Loan Exhibition of Cezanne for the Benefit of the New York Infirmary, Wildenstein, New York, 1947, no. 2, repro.

1952

  • Cézanne: Paintings, Watercolors & Drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1952, no. 7.

1964

  • Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections Suisses de Manet à Picasso, Palais de Beaulieu, Lausanne, 1964, no. 85, repro.

1984

  • Paul Cézanne, Museo Español de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, 1984, no. 3, repro.

1986

  • Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist.

  • Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad; State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 1986, no. 34, repro.

1988

  • Cézanne: The Early Years, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1988-1989, no. 16, repro.

1999

  • Faces of Impressionism: Portraits from American Collections, The Baltimore Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999-2000, no. 13, repro.

2011

  • Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The National Art Center, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 2011, no. 9, repro.

2017

  • Cézanne Portraits, Musée D'Orsay, Paris; National Portrait Gallery, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2017-2018, no. 3.1, repro.

Bibliography

1936

  • Venturi, Lionello. Cezanne, son art, son oeuvre. 2 vols. Paris, 1936.

1970

  • Orienti 1970, no.65.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 62, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 503, no. 745, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 82, repro.

1996

  • Rewald, John. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a catalogue raisonné. 2 vols. New York, 1996:no. 94, repro.

2022

  • Galvez, Paul. Courbet’s Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting. New Haven, 2022: 146, 147, color fig. 63.

Inscriptions

lower right: P.Cezanne

Wikidata ID

Q20188674

You may be interested in

Loading Results