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Shown from the thighs up, a boy wearing a crimson-red waistcoat stands against swags of fabric painted with visible strokes in white, sky blue, harvest yellow, and sage green in this loosely painted, vertical portrait. Painted with choppy brushstrokes, the boy has pale, ivory-white skin, blushing pink cheeks, pursed lips, faint eyebrows, and topaz-blue eyes that gaze down to our right. His shoulder-length, dark brown hair is tucked behind one ear under a brown wide-brimmed hat. His red waistcoat is worn over a long-sleeved, slate-blue shirt. The collar of his skirt is slightly flipped up on his right side, to our left, and a swipe of cobalt blue suggests a tie or scarf between the lapels. A band of sapphire blue could be a belt above olive-green trousers, and dashes of navy blue create shadows. His right hand, to our left, is planted on that hip. The other arm hangs straight and loose by his side, those fingertips almost brushing the bottom edge of the canvas. The boy’s body is outlined in dark blue. The drapery behind him falls in folds that sweep gently to our right. The background is painted with patches and swipes of cool blues and greens, and pale golden yellow. One swag of the drapery, over the shoulder to our left, is painted with a loose pattern suggesting leaves. One back post and a sliver of the curving back of a wooden chair peeks into the composition in the lower left corner.

Boy in a Red Waistcoat, 1888-1890

Paul Cezanne

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 84

This painting evokes the art of the past only to break boldly with its conventions. The boy is posed like an aristocrat in a 16th-century Italian portrait. He looks away from us, resting a hand on his cocked hips. But this is not a naturalistic portrait. Cezanne uses only patches of green and mauve for the boy’s face and hands. In the background, a floral curtain is fractured into a kaleidoscope of intersecting planes.

Through these experiments, Cezanne wants to capture his sitter from as many perspectives as possible. Yet the flurry of colorful brushstrokes transforms the boy into something impersonal, almost alien. Traditionally, portraits reveal the inner lives of their subjects; this one calls that goal into question.

Dive deeper

This is, at once, an astonishingly modern painting and one that reflects Cézanne's admiration for and connection to the past. He said himself that he "wanted to make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums." The boy's pose is that of an academic life study, and for some art historians it has recalled the languid elegance of 16th–century portraiture. As a young man in Paris, Cézanne had learned his art not only from his impressionist colleagues but also through studying old masters in the Louvre.

On the other hand, it is possible to see this so–called portrait as an entity of shapes and colors. Notice the paints used in the hands and face: these greens and mauves have little to do with human flesh. The almost dizzying background of angles and gentle arcs, which are difficult at first to "read" as draperies and a chair back, divide space rather than define it. A work such as this looks forward to the reconstructed pictorial space of the cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, leading one noted critic to write, "Cézanne's art ...lies between the old kind of picture, faithful to a striking or beautiful object, and the modern 'abstract' kind of painting, a moving harmony of color touches representing nothing."

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 89.5 x 72.4 cm (35 1/4 x 28 1/2 in.)

framed: 118.43 × 100.33 × 11.11 cm (46 5/8 × 39 1/2 × 4 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Accession Number

1995.47.5

Artists / Makers

Paul Cezanne (painter) French, 1839 - 1906

Image Use

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Detail Information

Provenance

(Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris); sold 1896 to Egisto Fabbri [1866-1933], Paris and Florence, until at least 1925;[1] (Paul Rosenberg, Paris, and Wildenstein Galleries, Paris); sold 1929 to Jakob Goldschmidt [d. 1955], Berlin and New York; his estate; (Goldschmidt sale, Sotheby's, London, 15 October 1958, no. 6); purchased by (Carstairs Gallery, New York) for Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1995 to NGA.

[1]According to John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996, no. 659, Fabbri sold the picture back to Vollard in 1904 and repurchased it at a later date. Fabbri lent it to the 1925 exhibition in Paris.

Associated Names

Carstairs Gallery
Fabbri, Egisto
Goldschmidt, Jakob
Mellon, Paul
Rosenberg & Co., Paul P.
Sotheby's
Vollard, Ambroise
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

Exhibition History

1910: Exposition Cezanne, Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, January 1910, no. 25.

1920: XII Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia, Venice, 1920, no. 9

1936: Exhibition of Masters of French 19th Century Painting, New Burlington Galleries, London, 1936, no. 94

1937: Figure Pieces, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1937, no. 17, repro.

1939: Masterworks of Five Centuries, Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939, no. 1, repro.

1940: Masterpieces of Art. European & American Paintings 1500-1900, New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 347, repro.

1941: French Painting from David to Toulouse-Lautrec, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1941, no. 8

1942: Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Cezanne, Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, 1942, no. 18, repro.

1945: The Child Through Four Centuries, Wildenstein, 1945, no. 34, repro.

1947: Loan Exhibition of Cezanne for the Benefit of the New York Infirmary, Wildenstein, New York, 1947, no. 53, repro.

1949: "What They Said" - Postscript to Art Criticism, for the Benefit of the Museumof ModernArt on its 20th Anniversary. Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York, 1949, no. 10.

1955: De David à Toulouse-Lautrec, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 1955, no. 3, repro.

1966: French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 70, repro.

1971: Cezanne. An Exhibition in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Phillips Collection, The Phillips Collection, Washington; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no.24, repro.

1991: Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, 236-237, color repro.

1999: An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.

2004: Cézanne: Aufbruch in die Moderne [Cézanne: The Dawn of Modern Art], Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2004-2005, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2006: Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant Garde, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2006-2007, no. 38, repro.

2011: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The National Art Center, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 2011, no. 10, repro.

2017: Cézanne Portraits, Musée D'Orsay, Paris; National Portrait Gallery, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2017-2018, no. 15.1, repro.

Bibliography

1920: Henraux, Lucien. "Cézanne della Raccolta Fabbri." Dedalo 1 (June 1920): repro. p. 57.

1966: Goldwater, Robert. "The Glory that was France." Art News 65 (March 1966): 85, repro. 42.

1966: Neugass, Fritz. "Jubiläumsschau in der National-Galerie in Washington." Weltkunst XXXVI, no. 8 (15 April 1966): 335, repro.

1966: Young, Mahonri Sharp. "The Mellon Collections: The Great Years of French Painting." Apollo 83 (June 1966): 432, repro. 427.

1991: Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 277.

1996: Rewald, John. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a catalogue raisonné. 2 vols. New York, 1996:no. 659, repro.

1996: Tansey, Richard G. and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages. 10th ed. Fort Worth, 1996: 997-998, color fig. 26.74.

1998: Kuthy, Sandor. Von Matisse bis Dali: Das Legat Georges F. Keller an das Kunstmuseum Bern / De Matisse à Dali: Le Legs Georges F. Keller au Musée des beaux-arts de Berne. Bern, 1998: 99, repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: vi, 390, no. 324, color repros.

2007: Bardazzi, Francesco, ed. Cézanne in Florence: Two Collectors and the 1910 Exhibition of Impressionism. Exh. cat. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. Milan, 2007: 264 fig. 28.

2012: Kennicott, Philip. "French Rooms Reopen, With Different Accents." Washington Post 135, no. 55 (January 29, 2012): E25, color repro.

2013: Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 418.

2016: Morton, Mary. "Paul Mellon: Private collector for the public." In Collecting for the Public: Works that Made a Difference. Essays for Peter Hecht. Edited by Bart Cornelis, Ger Luijten, Louis van Tilborgh, and Tim Zeedijk. Translated by Michael Hoyle. London, 2016: cover, 35, 36 fig. 12.