Portrait of Paul Cézanne

Camille Pissarro's 1874 portrait of Paul Cézanne is a remarkable document of friendship between two of the most important figures in the history of modern art. The two painters worked together in Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise in the early 1870s, profoundly influencing each other — Cézanne credited Pissarro as a decisive teacher, while Pissarro recognized in Cézanne a unique and radical temperament. Now at the National Gallery, this portrait is among the very few painted likenesses of Cézanne made from life, showing the younger painter as Pissarro knew him: intense, unconventional, and deeply serious in his artistic purpose.

Pissarro paints Cézanne with a fresh, direct technique using short, constructive strokes that anticipate the structured method Cézanne himself would develop. The sitter's rugged features are rendered without academic smoothing — paint builds the face with textural confidence.