1866 -1906 · friends, merchants, peasants and self-portraits

Geffroy, Vollard, a peasant or Cézanne himself are not captured in a psychological moment: their presence is slowly built through pose, clothing, armchair and colorful touches.

Portrait painting in Cézanne requires long sessions and an immobility which partly explains the reserve of faces. Gustave Geffroy, a critic favorable to the painter, is installed among the books but his hands remain unfinished after numerous poses. Ambroise Vollard said he posed more than a hundred times; his dark costume becomes a field of modulations where each touch must find its place. The peasants and gardeners of Aix have occupied the last few years with silent monumentality, without added social anecdote. In the Self-Portrait with Palette, the working tool enters directly into the effigy, but the painter does not give himself a triumphant posture. Cézanne does not seeks neither flattery nor the rapid grasp of a character: it treats the face as a complex landscape whose coherence must be reconstructed. The "Portraits of Paul Cézanne" selection notably compares Portrait of Gustave Geffroy and Portrait of Ambroise Vollard. His reading favors light.

The slowness of the Cézannian portrait does not empty the model of its presence: it moves it from a fleeting gesture to structure.