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拍品專文
The emotional restraint that pervades Cézanne's mature work seldom slips, even when tackling portraits of people familiar to him. It is, however, with the portaits of his young son, Paul, that sentiment is sometimes allowed to enter the frame, and the present work stands as a touching example of a father's affection for his child.
Paul fils was born in 1872, a product of Cézanne's uneasy relationship with Hortense Fiquet, and the present work appears to portray him at the age of ten. The modelling of the face, built up through a tightly knit network of small taches and in contrast to the summary handling of the torso and background, also suggests a date of around 1882, pace Rewald, who suggests a date of execution closer to 1885 (op. cit., p. 313). In further support of a slightly earlier dating are the features of Paul himself. In the present work Paul appears much plumper and more youthful in the face than in Le fils de l'artiste au fauteuil rouge (R.465), a work that clearly dates from around 1885 - the thinned oil and the more highly-keyed palette are indicators - but has itself curiously been sometimes listed as even earlier than the present work on the basis of the inclusion of the same red armchair featured in the Boston portrait of Hortense (R.324).
The lack of finish in Cézanne's treatments of Paul were discussed in the catalogue of the recent Finished - Unfinished Cézanne exhibition in Vienna. Christina Feilchenfeldt, in her entries on the portraits, quotes judiciously: 'While Renoir said of Cézanne that he need apply only two touches of colour to the canvas to create a picture, Picasso went so far as to maintain that a painting by Cézanne was present after only a single brushstroke' (Vienna, 2000, p. 139).
Paul fils was born in 1872, a product of Cézanne's uneasy relationship with Hortense Fiquet, and the present work appears to portray him at the age of ten. The modelling of the face, built up through a tightly knit network of small taches and in contrast to the summary handling of the torso and background, also suggests a date of around 1882, pace Rewald, who suggests a date of execution closer to 1885 (op. cit., p. 313). In further support of a slightly earlier dating are the features of Paul himself. In the present work Paul appears much plumper and more youthful in the face than in Le fils de l'artiste au fauteuil rouge (R.465), a work that clearly dates from around 1885 - the thinned oil and the more highly-keyed palette are indicators - but has itself curiously been sometimes listed as even earlier than the present work on the basis of the inclusion of the same red armchair featured in the Boston portrait of Hortense (R.324).
The lack of finish in Cézanne's treatments of Paul were discussed in the catalogue of the recent Finished - Unfinished Cézanne exhibition in Vienna. Christina Feilchenfeldt, in her entries on the portraits, quotes judiciously: 'While Renoir said of Cézanne that he need apply only two touches of colour to the canvas to create a picture, Picasso went so far as to maintain that a painting by Cézanne was present after only a single brushstroke' (Vienna, 2000, p. 139).