Description
Self-Portrait with a Soft Hat – in the catalogue the hat is a heading of its own
The painter has shown himself at a three-quarter turn: the body faces left, the head to the right. On his head sits a soft olive-ochre hat with the brim bent down, its shadow cutting across the forehead; beneath it appear a high brow and a large ear, and the face carries a thick grey-green beard. The coat is dark blue-green, laid on in broad strokes. Behind him stands a wall of green, grey and dull mauve patches. The canvas measures 60 × 49 cm, was made in 1894 and is today in Tokyo, at the Artizon Museum. Here the painter’s hand takes it over: a hand-painted painting on canvas, oil on canvas.
Why the hat gets its own heading
The catalogue raisonné files this canvas under two headings at once: self-portrait and, separately, self-portrait with hat. The second heading exists not for reasons of fashion but of quantity: the same face returns so often in this body of work that the face alone will no longer tell one canvas from another. The headgear becomes the mark: by it you know which canvas is which. The hat here is therefore not an ornament but the detail by which the work is found again.
A year that two records confirm
The dating of this work stands unusually firm. Rewald places it in 1894, and Vollard’s archive photograph, numbered 92, carries a note bearing the same year. Venturi’s older listing wavered between 1890 and 1894, but the newer sources settle on 1894. That two independent records should meet on a single year is not the rule with Cézanne – more often they diverge.
The journey to Tokyo and the unfinished edge
From Vollard’s shop, by way of Paris collections, the work went to Japan surprisingly early: it was in Tokyo by December 1920, fourteen years after the painter’s death, and has stayed there since. Along the left margin and at the lower left the canvas is not covered at all – the bare priming lies open, which is common in this painter and of which Poplars speaks more precisely. Another face from the same body of work is worn by Harlequin.
The portrait is built on three masses: the hat, the beard and the coat, all three dark, with the face between them the only warm surface. The work therefore stays quiet even in a small room and asks for no strong light; it stands well in a study, a library or a hallway. Because the canvas is upright, the smallest size begins at 41 × 50 cm and the largest measures 148 × 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 Tokyo museum, among our art paintings on canvas, comes Bowl and Milk-Jug as well.
- Subject: Self-Portrait with a Soft Hat, Paul Cézanne, 1894, Artizon Museum, Tokyo
- Technique: hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 15 dimensions, custom size on request
- Of note: the catalogue keeps a separate heading for self-portraits wearing a hat
