How are you?
Currently, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting
Art Stories”.
The 62nd story is “The Boy in the
Red Vest” by Paul Cézanne.
"The Boy in the Red Vest"
is a painting by Paul Cézanne, painted in 1889 (or 1890), and it is one of the
paintings showing Cézanne's mature feeling after 1880.
 |
| Self-portrait, Paul Cézanne (1875) |
Cézanne rarely used professional
models when painting figures, but this painting is one of the exceptions. The
model for this painting was Michelangelo di Rosa, an Italian boy, and Cézanne
painted four oil paintings and two watercolors of this boy in a red vest.
He painted this boy in all
different poses, and through this process, he studied the relationship between
the figure and space.
The most famous and commonly mentioned of the four oil paintings of the same title, this painting depicts a melancholic boy sitting with his elbow on a table and his head cradled in his hand, looking at the white paper on the table.
The Foundation E.G. Bührle, which now owns the painting, described it as "There is a perfect balance here of high compositional intelligence and spontaneous painterly intuition."
 |
| Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection |
In 1895, art critic Gustave Geffroy also said the painting could stand comparison with the finest figure paintings of the Old Masters.
 |
| Portrait of Gustave Geffroy, Paul Cézanne (1895) |
This painting of rich colors is organized with three main diagonals: the angle
of the boy's tilted back and head, the angle of the dark green curtain behind
the boy, and the long angle of the seat and table.
In 1895, the art dealer Ambroise
Vollard acquired the painting from Cézanne, followed by art collectors Marcell
Nemes in 1909 and Gottlieb Reber in 1913. The painting was then taken over by
art collector and patron Emil Georg Bührle in 1948, and after Bührle’s death in
1956, his heirs donated it to the Foundation E.G. Bührle in 1960.
 |
| Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, Paul Cézanne (1899) |
 |
| Emil Georg Bührle |
In February 2008, the painting, the
most valuable painting of the foundation at the time, was stolen from the
Foundation and recovered in Serbia in April 2012.
The following are three other
paintings of the boy by Cézanne with the same title during the same period.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment