Description
Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress – a room with everything carried out of it
The sitter faces the viewer square on, her dark hair centre-parted and drawn back. She wears a dark red, almost maroon dress with a soft belt knotted at the waist and long sleeves; her hands are folded low in her lap. She sits in a yellow armchair that shows at both shoulders and carries an olive-green leaf pattern. The wall behind is pale blue-grey, crossed at shoulder height by a dark horizontal band with a lighter one beneath it. The canvas measures 80.9 × 64.9 cm, was made between 1888 and 1890 and is held by the Art Institute of Chicago. Here the painter’s hand takes it over: a hand-painted painting on canvas, oil on canvas.
What is missing from the catalogue
For this canvas the catalogue raisonné records very little: the woman, the chair, and a chair rail – that horizontal strip of joinery which in old rooms runs along the wall at the height of a chair back. That is all. No wallpaper, no pattern on the wall, no other object. And that is exactly what is striking, once you know what the catalogue records for Madame Cézanne in a Striped Skirt: there a wallpaper and a lozenge wallpaper are both listed, and here there is nothing. The room has been cleared down to a single line.
Which leaves the colour to carry the dress
Because the wall is empty, the red dress remains the only large mass of colour on the canvas. The yellow armchair frames it on both sides, the blue-grey wall cools it, and the dark rail draws a straight line behind her back against which the figure reads as an upright. The work is therefore simple in construction and strong at a distance: three colours, three fields, nothing else. Her other portrait, where patterns abound, is Madame Cézanne in a Striped Skirt.
Moscow, Düsseldorf, London, New York, Chicago
This canvas travelled a great deal, and for each exhibition the catalogue also notes the name under which it hung at the time. In 1908 it was in Moscow at the Golden Fleece salon as “Portrait of the painter’s wife”; in 1909 in Düsseldorf as “The woman in the garnet dress”; in 1926 in London as “Portrait of Mme Cézanne in an armchair”; and in 1928 in New York already under the name it carries today. In April 1948 the Art Institute of Chicago bought it, and there it has stayed. From the same Chicago collection we also have The Basket of Apples.
Because the canvas is upright, the smallest size begins at 43 × 55 cm and the largest measures 142 × 180 cm. The work carries larger formats well, since the fields are broad and quiet; it stands well in a living room, a dining room or a reception room. Intermediate measurements we stretch to custom size on the stretcher frame, and how it will look framed is shown by our 3D rendering application. If you want a quiet still life to go with this portrait, among our art paintings on canvas it is The Kitchen Table.
- Subject: Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress, Paul Cézanne, 1888-1890, Art Institute of Chicago
- Technique: hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 15 dimensions, custom size on request
- Of note: for this work the catalogue records no wallpaper at all – only the chair and the chair rail
