Cézanne with bowler hat, sketch

Cézanne with Bowler Hat, Sketch (c.1885) at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen is a rapid self-portrait sketch — a preparatory study or working note rather than a finished canvas — that documents the artist's approach to his own image in an informal register very different from his carefully worked self-portraits. The bowler hat was the conventional headwear of the French bourgeoisie — Cézanne's social class, son of a successful banker — and its appearance in this sketch rather than the more characteristically working artist's beret or soft hat gives the self-image a slightly different social valence. The Glyptotek holds this alongside sculpture from antiquity and the nineteenth century, an institutional context that places a Post-Impressionist sketch in dialogue with the classical tradition Cézanne was himself engaging through his bather series. The sketch quality of the handling gives it a different kind of information than the finished self-portraits — the quick mark, the immediate notation.

Cézanne built surfaces through parallel, directional 'constructive' brushstrokes that model form and recession simultaneously. His palette of muted greens, ochres, and blue-greys is applied in overlapping planes that create a sense of solidity without conventional shading.