PAUL CÉZANNE

19 January 1839, Aix-en-Provence, France

22 October 1906, Aix-en-Provence, France

Late in life he said that "the culmination of all arts is the human face". This is peculiar if we understand that he was a master of landscape and still life.

"Cézanne's portraits" is the first exhibition in more than a century at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, later at London's National Portrait Gallery and, in March 2018, at the National Gallery in Washington.

His earliest portraits were of family members. A painting from 1877 of Hortense Fichet, his lover and the mother of their son, wearing a striped skirt, stands out for its dappled beauty; her face is composed of blocks of colour. Nothing like this in the previous history of portraiture. He paints faces more or less than a bowl of fruit, without a great emotion.

In his last years of life he painted peasants near his home in southern France and some friends. And he also painted the famous "Card Players" and  the "Woman with a cafetière".

But we cannot forget the extraordinary final portraits of Vallier, his gardner and we understand Cézanne's ultimate achievement. There is indeed emotion arising not from the subject's face but from the painter's brush.

"Cipiao", 1867

"Bathers", 1892

"Orgia", 1864

"Card players", 1892

Portrait of his father, 1866

"Afternoon in Naples", 1875

"The boy in the red waistcoat", 1889

"Saint Antonio temptation", 1873

His wife portrait, 1892

Tannhauser Overture, mother and sister of the artist, 1868

In Auvers, Switzerland

"Big Bathers", 1900

"The hanged man's house", 1873

Self portrait with bowler hat, 1885