Skip to Content
Home>Collection>Harlequin
Overview

Cézanne painted the austere and elegant Harlequin, one of four costume pieces including a Mardi Gras showing Harlequin and Pierrot and three variants focusing on Harlequin, between 1888 and 1890. The artist's son Paul posed for Harlequin. Sensitively portrayed in Mardi Gras, his face in Harlequin was replaced by an impassive mask, a further, more abstract stage in Cézanne's development of the theme. Harlequin's traditional diamond patterned costume, bicorn hat, and the wooden sword that denoted his buffoonery have appealed to artists from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and the character appears in Watteau's Italian Comedians and Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques. The opulent red and blue color scheme and lush surface texture are appropriate to Harlequin's theatrical origin, yet Cézanne emphasized the remoteness of the solitary figure.

Pissarro brought Cézanne into the impressionist movement and Cézanne showed in the first and third exhibitions, but in the late 1870s he stopped exhibiting in Paris and withdrew to Aix. Through the patient scrutiny of nature that Pissarro had advised and which Cézanne pursued in virtual isolation there, the dark and expressionistic execution that characterized his early work was transformed into his profoundly meditative late style.

Provenance

(Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris). Schuffenecker, Paris.[1] Auguste Pellerin [1852-1929], Paris; by inheritance to Jean Victor Pellerin, Paris; sold 1967 through (Cambio and Valorenbank) to Mr. Paul Mellon, Upperville, VA;[2] gift 1985 to NGA.

[1] According to John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996, no. 620.

[2] According to Mellon collection records in NGA curatorial files.

Exhibition History
1932
Exhibition of French Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 515
1986
Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist, repro.
1995
Cézanne, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995-1996, no. 124, repro. (shown only in Paris and Philadelphia).
1999
Around Impressionism: French Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999, no cat.
1999
Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1999, no. 52, repro.
2009
Picasso Cézanne, Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 2009-2010, no. 71, repro.
2011
Loan for display with permanent collection, Art Institute of Chicago, February - May 2011.
2012
Cézanne and the Past. Tradition and Creativity, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 2012-2013, no. 66, repro.
2017
Der verborgene Cezanne: vom Skizzenbuch zur Leinwand [The Hidden Cézanne: From Sketchbook to Canvas], Kunstmuseum Basel, 2017.
Bibliography
1991
Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 5, color repro.
1992
National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 199, repro.
1996
Rewald, John. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a catalogue raisonné. 2 vols. New York, 1996:no. 620, repro.
2001
Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA II: Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, 2001: 42-43, color repro.
Related Content
  • Sort by:
  • Results layout: