Autoportrait au béret (Self-Portrait with a Beret)

This late self-portrait from around 1898-1900, now at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, is among the most psychologically concentrated of Cézanne's many self-examinations. The beret — a working artist's accessory — places him firmly in the tradition of the artisan-painter rather than the bourgeois professional. By this date Cézanne was in his sixties, his health declining, working with ferocious intensity in the knowledge that time was limited. The self-portrait offers no sentimentality: the face is analyzed with the same detached rigor he brought to apples and mountains. It stands as one of the great portraits of artistic old age.

The face is built from Cézanne's characteristic parallel diagonal strokes, applied in interlocking passages of cool and warm color. The beret and jacket are rendered more broadly, directing attention to the intensely analyzed face. The background is nearly empty — a few strokes that define space without elaboration.