Portrait de l'artiste à la casquette (Self-Portrait in a Casquette)

This early self-portrait from around 1873-1875, now in the Hermitage, shows Cézanne in a working man's cap — the casquette — rather than the more formal dress of bourgeois portraiture. Painted during the years of his closest collaboration with Pissarro at Auvers and Pontoise, the work shows an artist still finding his way between Impressionist immediacy and his emerging structural concerns. The self-portraits of this period are among his most psychologically raw: a heavy, intense face, the gaze direct and challenging, the paint applied with an urgency that would gradually give way to the cooler analytical method of his maturity.

The paint is applied with considerable urgency compared to Cézanne's later self-portraits — thick strokes and strong tonal contrasts define the face. The cap and beard are rendered with bold, abbreviated marks. The background is neutral and unelaborated, focusing attention on the face's psychological intensity.