Self-portraits

Self-Portraits of around 1875, at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, represents Cézanne in his mid-thirties, at the critical juncture between his turbulent early manner and the beginning of his mature structural approach. The Orsay holds multiple Cézanne works as part of its comprehensive representation of Post-Impressionism, and the self-portrait from this transitional period is particularly valuable as evidence of the artist working through the problems that would occupy him for the remainder of his career. The heavily worked surface of 1875 differs markedly from the controlled modular surfaces of his 1880s and 1890s self-portraits: the earlier version retains a searching, provisional quality as if the technique is being discovered through its application. The face is already rendered with intense scrutiny but not yet with the crystalline method of the mature works.

The 1875 surface shows Cézanne applying paint in a more varied and less systematic manner than his later works: broad passages combine with more careful modelling around the eyes and mouth, and the colour is more restricted — dominated by ochres, browns, and dark greens — than the warm-cool modulation system of the 1880s onward.