1872 -1902 · twenty-nine oil portraits

Red dress, yellow armchair, greenhouse or blue clothing: Hortense Fiquet returns in nearly thirty oils where Cézanne explores pose, balance and space without delivering a simple sentimental biography.

Hortense Fiquet met Cézanne in Paris at the end of the 1860s, became the mother of their son Paul in 1872 and the painter's wife in 1886. Cézanne produced twenty-nine oil portraits of her, to which were added drawings and watercolors. Ancient interpretations have often confused his reserved expression with a judgment about their marriage; Recent research invites us to look instead at the duration of the sessions and the active role of the model in the experiment pictorial. In Madame Cézanne in a red dress, painted around 1888 -1890, she sits in a high yellow armchair between elements which seem to tilt towards her weight. In the greenhouse, verticals and vegetation organize another depth. The blue garment or the green hat modify the relationship between face, silhouette and background. Hortense is both a real person and the structural pivot of complex compositions. The "Madame Cézanne" selection puts particularly in view of Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850-1922) in a red dress and Madame Cézanne in a yellow armchair. His reading favors movement.

The reserve of Hortense's face does not mean absence: it allows the portrait to shift all its intensity towards posture, color and space.