Breysse

French, active 1875

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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.”
Paul Cezanne, Antony Valabrègue, 1866, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1970.35.1

Antony Valabrègue

Paul Cezanne · 1866 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.35.1

Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing us as she turns her head to look off to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The woman has pale, peachy skin, deeply shadowed, hooded eyes, and a straight nose. Shadows fill the hollow of her high cheekbones, and she has a thin face. Her black hair is plaited and tied up and back under brown bands. Earrings hang from each ear, and she wears two strands of white and gray pearls and three red necklaces. Her shoulders slope down, and her arms hang by her sides. The garnet-red bodice of her dress is cut low over a white undergarment. Red straps loop up over her mostly bare shoulders. Sapphire-blue sleeves leave the shoulders exposed and have black bands at the cuffs, which fall short of her wrists. An apron tied around her waist is loosely painted with deep red flowers and dark green leaves against a parchment-brown background. Her long skirt is midnight blue in the shadows. She holds a shimmering object in her right hand, to our left, and rests her other hand on the brown stone wall that runs behind her thighs. A tree edges into the scene along the right, and a few white stucco houses with flat, red roofs cluster on a rocky hill in the distance behind the woman, to our left. The cliffs span most of the background and end in a sheer face near the right edge of the canvas. The sky is tinged with peach at the horizon glimpsed at the foot of the cliff but is mostly steely gray. The artist signed the lower left corner, “COROT.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Agostina, 1866, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.108

Agostina

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot · 1866 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.108