The first exhibition devoted entirely to the portraits of Paul Cézanne, an artist hailed as “the father of us all” by Matisse and Picasso, is to be staged in London, Paris and Washington.
The National Portrait Gallery in London announced details of what it said would be a once in a lifetime exhibition.
It is collaborating with the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the Musée d’Orsay for a show that will bring together for the first time more than 50 of Cézanne’s portraits from collections all over the world.
Nicholas Cullinan, director of the NPG, said the gallery was delighted to be staging the show. “Up until now, Cézanne’s portraiture has received surprisingly little attention,” he said, “so we are thrilled to be able to bring together so many of his portraits for the first time to reveal arguably the most personal, and therefore most human, aspect of Cézanne’s art.”
It will include portraits that have never before been on display in the UK. For example, his arresting Self-Portrait in a Bowler Hat 1885-86, which hangs in a collection presented to Denmark by the brewers Carlsberg in the late 19th century in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek gallery in Copenhagen.
Other works will include Boy in a Red Waistcoat, being lent by Washington, and Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair, coming from the Art Institute of Chicago. Both will be shown in the UK for the first time since the 1930s.
There will also be portraits from the 1860s of the artist’s Uncle Dominique, for which he used a brush and palette knife, applying paint almost as if it were cement, and portraits made shortly before his death in 1906 of his gardener and odd-job man at Les Lauves, Aix-en-Provence, Vallier.
The show includes about a quarter of the 200 portraits Cézanne is known to have painted in his career. He painted 26 self-portraits and 29 portraits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet.
Cézanne is a hugely important figure in art history, influencing the art of Cubists, Fauvists and successive generations of avant-garde artists.
The exhibition will open in Paris first, running at the Musée d’Orsay from 13 June-24 September 2017, before it goes to the NPG form 26 October-11 February 2018, and finally the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 25 March-1 July 2018.
