“Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress” by Paul Cézanne

“Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress” by Paul Cézanne is a portrait of the artist’s wife wearing a shawl-collared red dress seated in a high-backed yellow chair.

Madame Cézanne is placed in a spatially complex composition, which includes a mirror over the fireplace on the left and a richly colored heavy cloth on the right.

The subject, Marie-Hortense Fiquet Cézanne (1850 – 1922), was a former artist’s model who met Cézanne about 1869; they had a son in 1872, and later married.

Paul Cézanne painted 27 portraits, mostly in oil of her, and she became his most-painted model.

Marie-Hortense Fiquet met Cézanne at a Paris art school. The School was used by artists to paint the models who worked there.

Fiquet’s primary job was as a bookseller and bookbinder, but she combined this with part-time work as a model.

They started a relationship; however, Cézanne was afraid of offending his father, a well-to-do banker, and to not compromise his allowance, he went to great lengths to conceal his liaison with Fiquet.

Fiquet and Cézanne eventually married. However, Fiquet was to live separately from her husband for much of their married life, and they later separated.

The psychological distance between husband and wife appears to be reflected in her portraits, where Cézanne gives the impression of her being distant and self-absorbed.

Despite their complicated relationship, a large number of paintings by Cézanne of his wife attests to her compelling role in the artist’s life and artistic development.

Paul Cézanne was a Post-Impressionist painter who laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century Impressionism to the 20th century’s Cubism.

Both Matisse and Picasso have remarked that Cézanne “is the father of us all.” Cézanne’s art is characterized by repetitive, exploratory small brushstrokes that build up to form complex color fields, demonstrating his intense study of his subjects.

Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress

Title: Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1890
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Height: 116.6 cm (45.9 in); Width: 89.5 cm (35.2 in)
Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art – MET

Paul Cézanne

Name: Paul Cézanne
Born: 1839 – Aix-en-Provence, France
Died: 1906 (aged 67) – Aix-en-Provence, France
Nationality: French
Movement: Post-Impressionism
Notable works:
- The Card Players (Barnes Foundation)
- The Card Players (Courtauld Gallery)
- The Card Players (MET)
- Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory
- Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress
- Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair
- Bathers (The National Gallery, London)
- The Large Bathers (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
- Bathers by Paul Cézanne (Art Institute of Chicago)
- Bathers by Paul Cézanne (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC)