Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Portrait of Cezanne

Audio

Listen to director and curator Colin Bailey discuss Renoir’s portrait of his friend and fellow artist Paul Cezanne.

Renoir and Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) had been friends since the 1860s, and in the following decade they helped to found the group of artists known as Impressionists. This vibrant pastel may have been commissioned by Victor Chocquet, a government official and art collector who supported both artists and owned many of their works. This likeness must have pleased both Chocquet, who owned it until his death in 1891, and Cezanne, who made his own copy in oil paint after the pastel.

Paul Cezanne, 1880 
Pastel 
Private Collection.

Transcription

Cezanne and Renoir first came into contact in Paris in the 1860s when both were studying art, attempting to launch their careers, and meeting regularly in cafés with their friends as well as older artists such as Édouard Manet and Camille Pissarro, whom they viewed as mentors. Cezanne, Renoir, and Pissarro were among the artists who organized the first exhibition in 1874 of the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs—or the limited liability company of painters, sculptors, and printmakers—that came to be known as the Impressionists. Although we have considerable information about several pastel portraits of his friends and patrons that Renoir made and successfully exhibited in 1879 and 1880, the circumstances in which this vivid likeness of his fellow artist was created are unknown. It may have been commissioned by its first owner, the collector Victor Chocquet. Chocquet had been introduced to Cezanne by Renoir several years earlier, and went on to acquire numerous works by both artists. The sharp contrast between the sitter’s blue-black jacket and the brilliant yellow background imbues this sympathetic portrayal with a lively energy that suggests something of Cezanne’s creativity, even as his closed expression and resolute stare hint at a rather prickly personality. Despite this, the two artists maintained a longstanding friendship, and when Cezanne, who was a native of Aix-en-Provence, settled there permanently in the 1880s, Renoir visited and painted alongside him in the South of France on several occasions.