Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850-1922) in a red dress, Paul Cezanne 1888-90 by MadameRuiz

About "Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850-1922) in a red dress, Paul Cezanne 1888-90"

by MadameRuiz

About the artwork

Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in a Red Dress
Paul Cezanne
1888–90

See also the painting Madame Cézanne in a yellow chair https://www.werkaandemuur.nl/nl/shopwerk/Madame-Cezanne-in-a-Yellow-Chair-Paul-Cezanne-1888-90-The-Art-Institute- or-Chicago/1032552
Both works are exactly matched in terms of height, width and texture, so that you can hang them next to each other.

Of the four portraits Cézanne painted of his wife Hortense Fiquet in her red dress, this is the only painting where Cézanne incorporated additional furniture into the painting. Madame Cézanne is sitting, as in the other painting that you can find in my shop, on a yellow chair. But unlike the other painting, there is a lot to see around her. Next to her we see a curtain, as we are used to from 17th century painting (although this painting is clearly Post-Impressionist, a movement at the end of the 19th century). To her left we see a mirror, standing on top of a fireplace. We can deduce from this that this painting was made in Cézanne's apartment that he rented at 15 quai d'Anjou in Paris from 1888 to 1890. Exactly the dates also mentioned for the painting.

Cézanne is the artist we know from post-impressionism. In fact, we should see this period as after Impressionism and as a precursor to Modernism. We still see a kind of impression of the moment. It is therefore not surprising that 4 similar paintings were made, because in principle it is not about the subject, but about the snapshot of that subject. Cézanne is seen as a forerunner of modernist cubism at the beginning of the 20th century because of his somewhat angular style and an increasingly flattening of the form.

The painting has beautiful colors. Really the colors I love. Toned, grayed-out shades of red, blue, tending to turquoise in combination with the color as I imagine the ocean. Due to the weakening, the yellow moves towards ocher. A beautiful work in all simplicity, yet multiplicity, and the somewhat strange composition.

If I look longer at the painting, it seems as if Mrs. Cézanne is sitting at the same angle as the angle in which the curtain runs away.

The original is painted with oil on canvas. Approx. 117x90cm. The original is on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Credit Line: The Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr. Purchase Fund, 1962, Accession Number: 62.45, CC0 Public Domain Designation