Description
Self-Portrait with a Pink Background – the work named after its wall
The painter is bare-headed, the head turned to the right. The crown is high and bald, dark hair remains at the sides and behind, a large ear is exposed at the left, and the jaw is covered by a thick dark beard. The lower half is filled by an almost black coat, with a red-brown scarf crossing the chest. Behind him, across nearly half the surface, stands a brick-pink wall carrying large pale cream scrolling shapes, laid on in loose strokes. The canvas measures 66 × 55 cm, was made about 1875 and is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Here the painter’s hand takes it over: a hand-painted painting on canvas, oil on canvas.
Twelve names, and only three speak of the wall
The catalogue raisonné records twelve different titles for this canvas. Nine say only who is shown: Self Portrait, Portrait of Cézanne, Portrait of a Painter, Selbstbildnis, Zelfportret. The remaining three – among them the one the catalogue puts first – add a single thing, and all three add the same one: the pink ground. On a work that shows the painter’s own face, then, the most distinguishing thing is his wall. The catalogue lists it among the motifs as wallpaper.
The bare head
This self-portrait is bare-headed: the Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat of 1878-1879 and the Self-Portrait with a Soft Hat of 1894 both cover the head. Here, about 1875, there is neither straw nor felt – the high crown lies open, and it is exactly this that makes the face look older than it was: the painter was thirty-six at the time.
Until 2007 it could not be seen
The canvas spent almost all of its time in private hands. The catalogue records the route from the collector Auguste Pellerin by way of Monsieur and Madame Lecomte, a private Swiss collection, the Beyeler gallery in Basel and Philippe Meyer – and only in 2007 did the Musée d’Orsay take it. It was publicly shown rarely; the catalogue notes it among other places at the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1907, as number 22, lent by Pellerin.
In colour the work rests on a single opposed pair: the warm brick-pink wall and the almost black coat, with the pale crown and the cream shapes of the wallpaper between them. Because the contrast is so simple it carries at a distance and will take a wall of stronger colour. Because the canvas is upright, the smallest size begins at 42 × 50 cm and the largest measures 152 × 180 cm. Intermediate measurements we stretch to custom size on the stretcher frame, and how it will look framed is shown by our 3D rendering application. From the same Paris collection, among our art paintings on canvas, comes Still Life with Soup Tureen as well.
- Subject: Self-Portrait with a Pink Background, Paul Cézanne, about 1875, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
- Technique: hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 15 dimensions, custom size on request
- Of note: of twelve titles in the catalogue only three name anything but the painter – and all three name the wall
