face.â
Marine bent down, getting as close to the canvas as possible without touching it. She said, âThere are all kinds of color in her face: pink, of course, but look at those bits of green and blue. Even yellow.â She pointed, her finger hovering about an inch above the canvas. âYellow in her eyebrows, and at the tip of her mouth.â
âCézanne called them âsensations of color,ââ Anatole Bonnet said, âlike planes of color falling on top of each other. It happens in the backgrounds, too; they were just as important to him as the face. CézanneâI mean, the painter of this canvasâhas given just as much attention to the green wall behind the sitter as he does her face. Thatâs a Cézanne quality.â
âYou can see those Cézanne geometric forms here, too,â Verlaque said, pointing to the canvas. âThe ruffled collar of her dress is just a series of cylinders.â
â
Exactement
,â Marineâs father replied. âBut this has something elseââ
âWhat?â Marine and Verlaque asked in unison.
âPersonality,â Dr. Bonnet replied. âBecause Antoineâs rightâCézanne was more interested in shape and color than in the sitter. But this young womanâs personality shines through.â
The foursome stood in silence, staring at the red-haired woman, who sat upright, laughing at the painter. She had full lips and large blue eyes, wore a simple blue blouse and skirt, and in her hands she played with a thin yellow ribbon. The chair was a wood-backed one of the sort still popular in Provence, and the wall was green with no paintings or other adornments.
âAnd Cézanne usually didnât reveal the sitterâs personality?â Paulik asked.
âNo,â Dr. Bonnet replied. âHe didnât. He never hired female models, either. Even his
Bathers
series he took from nude studies from the Académie Suisse in Paris, where he had studied as a young man. He was notoriously shy, especially around women.â
âHence all the portraits of Hortense,â Marine suggested.
âYes, he was married to Hortense, so there must have been an easiness between them, or a familiarity at least.â
âWas it usual for him to sign his paintings?â Verlaque asked, pointing to the
P. Cézanne
written on the paintingâs right-hand bottom corner.
âNo,â Dr. Bonnet said. âHe rarely signed, as he was frequently unhappy with his results. And he rarely dated his works, but this one is clearly dated, â85.â
âAs if he wanted to remember the date,â Marine said. âLike dating the back of a photograph.â
Anatole Bonnet mumbled to himself, took a clean handkerchief out of his pocket, and blew his nose. âHis last portraits, painted in 1905 and â06, just before his death, were of his gardener, old Vallier,â he said, folding up his hankie. âThose had more intimacy than the earlier portraits, at least for me, because you see in the old manâs face the painterâs own fear of dying, of growing old.â
Marine looked at her father and tried to see if he felt the same fear. She had never spoken to her parents about growing old, probably because they never sat still.
âItâs the gardenerâs aged, wrinkled hands that reveal Cézanneâs old age,â he went on. âAnd in those paintings the paint is layered on, very thickly, like in this portrait.â
âItâs very Rembrandtesque,â Marine said.
âA very apt comparison,â Dr. Bonnet said, smiling. âThe paintings of Vallier are very moving, like Rembrandtâs late self-portraits. But this one is joyous. And if we are to believe the date, it was painted a good twenty years before the Vallier portraits.â
âSo itâs not in his later style?â Verlaque asked.
âNot at all,â Dr. Bonnet answered.
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