Cézanne portraits
(Book)

Published to accompany the exhibition "Cézanne Portraits" held at the Musée D'Orsay in Paris from 13 June to 24 September 2017 ; the National Portrait Gallery in London from 26 October 2017 to 11 February 2018 ; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from 25 March to 1 July 2018.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 246-247) and index.

"This book, like the exhibition it accompanies, looks at the special pictorial and thematic characteristics of Cezanne's portraiture practice, including his creation of complementary pairs and multiple versions of the same subject. The chronological development of the artist's portraiture is also explored, with an examination of the changes that occurred with respect to his style and method, on the one hand, and his understanding of resemblance and identity, on the other . The extent to which particular sitters inflected the characteristics and development of his practice is also considered. Cezanne Portraits features works that mutually inform each other to reveal arguably the most personal, and therefore most human, aspect of his art, and one that has hitherto received surprisingly little attention. They range from Cezanne's earliest surviving self - portraits, dating from the 1860s, through to his final portraits of Vallier, the gardener at his house near Aix-en-Provence, made shortly before the artist's death in 1906. Exhibition curator John Elderfield contributes an illuminating introductory essay on Cezanne's portraiture, while the artist's biographer, the late Alex Danchev, provides an informative dramatis personae on the sitters featured. The catalogue texts are by John Elderfield, Mary Morton and Xavier Rey, and a chronology by Jayne Warman sets the artist's work in the context of his life."--Provided by publisher.