Between 1872 and 1892, Madame Cézanne, or Hortense Fiquet (1850-1922), was portrayed by Paul Cézanne in 29 paintings and approximately 50 drawings. He met her when he was studying in Paris. They eventually moved to L’Estaque, as his father, a banker from Aix-en-Provence, did not approve of their relationship. They had children and got married ten years later. Shortly afterwards, they separated, but Cézanne continued to portray her. Affectively distant, the paintings follow the same structure, similar to his landscape studies of Mount Sainte-Victoire or the apples in his still lifes. She is always in a frontal position, her hair parted in the middle, often in a seated position. In contrast to the impressionists, who produced the same scenes in order to capture variations in light, Cézanne insisted on particular themes as a way of reworking a structure: the figure follows a scheme of elliptical forms — the head, the upper body (with arms making an oval shape and interlaced hands), and the dress. A slightly tilted vertical line guides the three axes. In 2014, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum brought together 24 portraits of Madame Cézanne. The most complex and representative ones are the four paintings where she appears wearing a red dress — probably produced in her apartment in Paris, at nº 15 do Quai d’Anjou, in Île Saint-Louis — which were displayed together in the exhibition’s first room. MASP’s painting is the most concise and singular due to the lack of elements in the scene that could disrupt the figure: the greenish-blue background contrasts with the red dress, painted as an intricate monochromatic sculpture. However, the face is the most expressive element, revealing a sad and tired gaze that looks at something to the left of the painter.
— Laura Cosendey, assistent curator, MASP, 2021
By Luciano Migliaccio
Hortense Fiquet was possibly a professional model who met Cézanne in Paris in the late 1860s and bore him a son, named Paul, in 1872. They were finally married on April 28 1886. Hortense was Cézanne’s model in various canvases painted in the 1890s: Madame Cézanne at the Veranda (c.1890, New York, Metropolitan Museum), three versions of Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair, one at the Chicago Art Institute (c.1890), two in private collections, both of which dated between 1890 and 1894. While drawing a comparison between Mrs. Cézanne in Red and other portraits, Venturi (1936, p. 189) suggested that Madame Cézanne looks more tranquil, more contented, and simple in this work, and the flowers in her hands make her look more pleasant. Camesasca (1989, p. 112) remarked that the painter sought a formal analysis free of psychological interference. Valsecchi stated that “the simple pose and the crystal-clear lighting that enhances the superb artistic rendition of the figure highlighted by the slow diffusion of the oval rhythm are as pleasant as they are massive, like in figures painted by young Giotto.” Cézanne’s figures are often compared to those of Piero della Francesca due to their monumental nature and apparent lack of expression. They feature an expression that is informed more by temperament and less by the representation of a transitory aspect of their emotional state, so for this reason Cézanne situated them in a pensive atmosphere. Valabrègue once stated that the portraits produced by young Cézanne seemed to denote some sort of vengeance against a possible evil action on the part of the model against him. Beginning in 1875, aggressiveness was replaced by a more peaceful search for the inner essence of his portrait subjects, which became more intense after the dissension of the Impressionist group in 1878. In the portraits of his wife painted in the period from 1890 to 1894, this research became more radical as it progressively isolated his model from the external context while flattening the cubic space of traditional perspective (Ponente). The Masp painting may be seen as a synthesized reformulation of Madame Cézanne in the Yellow Chair (Venturi, n. 570). Here the abstract background assumes an important value and tends to put itself in the same plane as the figure, thus acquiring its same density. Cézanne seeks a balance of representational tensions, even if a precarious one, rather than the juxtaposition of planes organized on the surface (Clay). This balance reflects his doubts, his pain, and the series of attempts involved in the artist’s creative process (Schapiro). It evinces in his work a temporal dimension, the “prickling of duration,” as Cézanne himself used to describe it.
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998
