Portrait of Louis Guillaume
Portrait of Louis Guillaume | |
---|---|
Artist | Paul Cézanne |
Year | c.1882 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 22 cm × 18.5 cm (8.7 in × 7.3 in) |
Location | National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
Portrait of Louis Guillaume is an oil-on-canvas portrait painted c. 1882 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Guillaume was the son of friends of the artist and a friend of Cézanne's son, Paul. He is portrayed in a highly sculpted manner with a near-expressionless, uncommunicative face and an immobile, lifeless body. In form and complexity, the painting is ahead of its time. It contains many abstractions, mostly in its presentation of the head and body as simple, solid shapes,[1] a technique later taken up and developed by Henri Matisse.
The work's low-key colours, mostly greys, whites and dark greens, achieve a sombre tone, echoed by the shy reserve on the boy's face. While his skin is rendered with pearly white paint, giving the surface a lively sheen or glow, this contrasts with his black, severely cropped hair and dark clothes,[2] while his eyes are only black hollows. Heavy-lidded, they are, according to art critic Meyer Schapiro, "without spiritual light ... they belong to a world of shadow."[1]
One critic famously wrote that Cézanne painted the heads of friends as if they were apples, and that sense of cool detachment is evident in this work. Its formal qualities are reminiscent of a still-life or landscape, however while at first look there is evidence of the artist's awareness of the "abyss between human beings", there are signs of hope and connection in the delicately rendered tones of the cheeks, the ornament of the wall, the folds of the dress, and the cravat which echoes the verticals of the folds of the face and wall.[1]
The painting was purchased by Ambroise Vollard by 1906. It was sold to a Florentine collector c. 1907 before it was sold in 1927 to Chester Dale in New York. In 1963 Dale donated the work to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[3]
See also
References
Sources
- Schapiro, Meyer. Cézanne. Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ISBN 0-8109-9146-2
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- List of paintings
- The Negro Scipion (1867)
- The Overture to Tannhäuser (1869)
- L'Estaque, Melting Snow (c. 1871)
- The Hanged Man's House (1873)
- A Modern Olympia (c. 1873-1874)
- L'Après-midi à Naples (c. 1876)
- The Eternal Feminine (c. 1877)
- View of Auvers-sur-Oise (1879–80)
- Three Bathers (1879–1882)
- Portrait of Louis Guillaume (1879–1882)
- Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley (1882–1885)
- Chestnut Trees and Farm at Jas de Bouffan (c. 1884)
- Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from Bellevue (1885)
- House in Provence (1885)
- Chestnut Trees and Farm at Jas de Bouffan (c. 1886)
- Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine (c. 1887)
- Portrait of Madame Cézanne with Loosened Hair (1883–1887)
- The Banks of the Marne (1888)
- Pierrot and Harlequin (1888–1890)
- Still Life with Peaches and Pears (1888–1890)
- View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph (late 1880s)
- The Basket of Apples (c. 1893)
- Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier (1893–1894)
- The Boy in the Red Vest (1894–1895)
- Portrait of Gustave Geffroy (1895)
- Bridge Across a Pond (1895–1898)
- Seated Peasant (c. 1892–1896)
- Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (1899)
- Pipe Smoker Leaning on a Table (1895–1900)
- Women Bathing (c. 1900)
- Lady in Blue (c. 1900)
- Pyramid of Skulls (1901)
- Forest (1902–1904)
- The Bunch of Flowers (1902–1904)
- The Bathers (1898–1905)
- Still Life with Teapot (1902–1906)
- La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue du bosquet du Château Noir (1904)
- The Card Players (1890–1895)
- Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904–1906)
- Marie-Hortense Fiquet (model and wife)
- Homage to Cézanne (1900 painting)
- The Impressionists (2006 series)
- Cézanne and I (2016 film)
- Cézanne (crater)
- Corbarimys cezannei