Portrait of Marie Cezanne, sister of the artist 1866 FWN 418 53.5cm x 37
Portrait of the Elizabeth Aubert, mother 1870 FWN 426 53.5cm x 37
These paintings are rather interesting because they’re on opposite sides of the same canvass. For many years, the portrait of Marie, Cezanne’s sister, was thought to be the portrait of the canvass; but nigh on 100 years later, it was discovered that underneath the black coating of the reverse was a portrait of Cezanne’s mother, which are pretty few and far between. We do not know who blackened it out, or when – I don’t think it likely to have been the family member named Paul….
Paul Cezanne was born on 19th Jan 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, the son of Louis-Auguste Cezanne, a hatter, aged 40 and of Anne Elizabeth Honorine Aubert, aged 24, of Aix. The couple would have their second child, Marie in 1841, and the third, after somewhat of a gap, Rose, in 1854 (who rather strangely does not appear to have lived with the family for five years or so). Cezanne’s mother was the person who was always supportive of Paul; his father, and two sisters were pretty dismissive of his talent as an artist all through his life. His father, the archetypal self-made man, wanted Paul to be a lawyer, and made his son study law for a couple of years after his schooling. Probably with the help of the mother of the family, Louis-Auguste eventually realized that he couldn’t make his son be a good lawyer, and so provided him with a meagre monthly allowance to enable him to study art. “I’m here among my family” Cezanne wrote from Aix in letters to Pissarro and Zola in Paris, 1866, “the foulest people on earth …real crap! Let’s say no more about it.” “I’m feeling a bit down; as you know, I don’t know what causes it; it comes back every evening, when the sun goes down, and it rains. That brings on the gloom.”
I am not the things my family did
I am not the voices in my head
I am not the pieces of the brokenness inside
I am light,
I am light
Song by India Arie