Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair

Painted c.1888-1890 and now at the Art Institute of Chicago, Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair is one of the most psychologically compelling of the long series of portraits of Hortense Fiquet. By this period the couple's relationship had grown increasingly distant — Cézanne's father had died in 1886, leaving him financially independent, and he had finally married Hortense that same year to legitimise their son — yet he continued to use her as a model with extraordinary frequency. The yellow of the chair creates a bold chromatic context for the sitter, and her characteristic stillness and frontal gaze are rendered with monumental simplicity.

The golden yellow of the chair is the dominant colour note, rendered with strokes of lemon, amber, and warm ochre. Hortense's dress — divided horizontally at the waist between two pattern zones — is treated with geometric precision. The face is built with characteristically cool, almost mask-like planes of pale ochre, grey, and rose that give her a simultaneously distant and intensely present quality.