I attribute this painting to Paul Cézanne, and I believe it dates to the height of his Impressionist era, ca. 1875.
The painting also fits the published description of the long-lost Portrait de M. L. A... which, in 1882, became the artist's only painting ever to be exhibited in the Paris Salon.
The 1870s were a mysterious period in the artist's life during which Cézanne produced a series of pictorial puzzles, mementos which documented people, events, and his evolution.
This portrait appears to belong to that series, and I believe it to be the companion work to one of the artist's major figure compositions of the same era ca. 1875.
The Fishermen aka Scene Fantastique FWN 634
Prior to the Internet and the advent of high quality online photos, the backgrounds of Cézanne's early portraits were difficult to define in the prints, often black and white, which were shown in books. Yet they were better than nothing. Indistinct backgrounds were a common feature in the artist's early portraits from the 1860s, where beyond creating light or shadows, there was no obvious indication of what the surface might be.
By the early 1870s Cézanne had begun to incorporate suggestive backgrounds which challenged the viewer's imagination, you instinctively sense what you are looking at, but to identify it is like describing something from a dream.
The background of The Fisherman is one of those suggestive backgrounds, and as a piece of one of the artist's pictorial puzzles it required more context to be fitted into place.
The fisherman featured in front of the sail in Scene Fantastique served as the key to deciphering the intentionally ambiguous, yet very specific background of the portrait. In the image below, I can illustrate a similar effect by eliminating surrounding details.
Recognizing the sail in the portrait background offers a hint to unraveling the subject's identity—an old man seen outdoors under the bright midday sun. He is dressed in clothing the artist often used to portray laborers, boatmen, fishermen, or ordinary people enjoying leisure by the water. Therefore, the subject could have been described as any tradesman working outdoors with canvas—perhaps a fisherman, a sailmaker, a boatman, a tentmaker, or... an artist.
In terms of dating the portrait, all of Cézanne's figures depicted in trousers and white long-sleeved shirts are found within the period of the artist's pictorial puzzles, the 1870s.
The portrait then provided a key to the greater mystery of the landscape, and the identity of the fisherman who had been so conspicuously highlighted in front of the sail. Based on other clues to these pictorial puzzles, I suggest that the figures represented Cézanne's mentor, Camille Pissarro.
Having gone to the trouble of disguising the background, I doubt Cézanne had titled this portrait The Fisherman, doing so would have spoiled any associated puzzles. Other than the sail, there is no other indication to suggest a fisherman. Unless of course you were familiar with his painting Scene Fantastique which featured a fisherman prominently highlighted in front of a sail.
And, if it had been the portrait of a man exhibited in the Salon of 1882 as "Portrait de M. L. A...," it is certain that the title would have been given a great deal of consideration. The fact that the identity of the painting remained unknown for over a century attests to the fact that Cézanne didn't intend the portrait subject described only as "Monsieur L. A." to be easily determined, unless you had been there and seen it.
The head of the portrait subject appears to have been painted from Jean-Antoine Houdon's bronze bust of Voltaire, which had been in private hands since its recovery from a public monument which was destroyed during the Paris Commune in 1871.
I think the artist knew that it was unlikely that anyone at the Salon of 1882 had seen that bust for over a decade, it only entered the Louvre in 1880. That didn't mean he couldn't provide clues. As they say nowadays, "if you know, you know". Having altered every aspect one would associate with Voltaire's appearance, it is difficult to say that the artist was engaged in subliminal messaging. And yet, it seems apparent that the painter had created a figure based on that bronze bust.
While Voltaire's lifelong determination to rebel against authority would have appealed to Cézanne, it was not necessarily Voltaire's accomplishments which drew him to the bust. It was Houdon's image of an emaciated Voltaire, providing the basic form of a human head which I believe had inspired the artist to refine his portrait techniques. Camille Pissarro's mentorship represented the same inspiration in refining his landscape techniques.
I believe the bust may have been an integral part of the artist's evolution ever since his early days in Paris, the history of the bust prior to its arrival in the Louvre is quite remarkable, and I believe Paul Cézanne was part of that history.
The majority of Cézanne's paintings were likely never seen by anyone during his lifetime. Looking at the titles we know were assigned by the artist in his two public exhibitions prior to 1882, most titles were so vague that no one is sure which exhibition catalogue number applies to which painting.
We are all familiar with the titles given to Cézanne's portraits, where many of those titles originated is uncertain.
Between the two Impressionist shows he participated in, the only portrait of a woman he had exhibited was in 1877, the portrait of his mistress and future wife Hortense Fiquet, now known as Portrait de madame Cezanne, c.1877 (FWN 441).
Yet the title assigned by the artist was "Figure de femme; Etude d'après nature". Since Cézanne's father Louis-Auguste was as yet unaware of both Hortense and his grandson Paul Jr., this title seems sensible in order to avoid exposing his hidden family.
And prior to Portrait de M. L. A... in 1882, the only portrait of a man he had ever exhibited in public, a man he greatly admired and respected, was the work now known as Portrait de Victor Chocquet, 1876–77 (FWN 437). Yet the title Cézanne had assigned to this portrait in the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877 was "Tête d'homme; Etude".
Through the filter of The Fisherman, considering his high esteem for Chocquet, it seems odd that he had selected that particular portrait to be exhibited, without naming the sitter. As I see it, he wanted the painting to be seen anonymously as a study of portrait technique, as opposed to being a portrait of Victor Chocquet.
What was remarkable to me was that it was the portrait which had first drawn my attention to Cézanne. The similarities seemed uncanny to me, and this was long before I knew anything about the Impressionist exhibitions, Portrait de M. L. A... and the Salon of 1882, Houdon's bust of Voltaire, or Scene Fantastique. Unlike his earlier portrait titles, in 1882 he had provided a title which included M. for Monsieur with a space, followed by L. with a space (indicating a single forename beginning with L), followed by A... (indicating a single surname beginning with A).
Is it just a coincidence that Voltaire's family surname is Arouet?
So far all attempts to locate the Salon registration form for Portrait de M. L. A... at the Salon archives have been futile, and after decades of study I have arrived at the possibilty that no full name was given on that form, in order to maintain that aspect of the riddle. Yet the form would still help identify the painting by its size as listed on the registration form. All published comments regarding the size of the painting exhibited in 1882 referred to it as "small".
Based on the theory that the figure in The Fisherman had represented Camille Pissarro, I considered that the initials might have stood for l'Artiste. But "l'Artiste" would have revealed too much information, and would have been abbreviated as "l'A.".
When I presented a French typography forum with the theory of "Portrait de Monsieur l'Artiste", with Monsieur as an honorific, I was informed that "Portrait de Monsieur l'Artiste sounds really pompous and funny in French, it doesn't look at first sight as a tribute to artists, but as an ironic title".
After studying the many titles listed in the Salon catalogue, I believe that a painting simply titled "l'Artiste", would not have included "Portrait de" or M. for Monsieur, and would not be abbreviated.
My interaction with the French typography forum provided the impetus to study the abbreviations found in the Salon catalogue, and I may be the first to have done so as regards the title Portrait de M. L. A.... Just as knowing the registered size of the painting would eliminate possible candidates, when it comes to defining what the initials stand for there are typographical rules in-effect, so knowing what something isn't, is as important as knowing what it is.
In addition to the Voltaire/Pissarro figure, there is another figure also highlighted in front of the sail which I suggest represents the artist himself.
Representing the Salon painters, in the distance sporting his top hat, the artist's ever-dapper close friend Antoine Guillemet. And in the left foreground shown from behind, Édouard Manet turning away from the Impressionists in 1874 in order to concentrate on Salon acceptance. I suspect that the third figure wearing a top hat, hidden behind the mast and sail, may also represent a Salon artist, or perhaps the Salon regime in general.
For the same reason he would not title the portrait The Fisherman, the artist would not have spoiled the mystery of his river landscape puzzle by naming it "The Artists," Les Artistes. Yet the fishermen, preparing to set-off on their daily task of harvesting from nature, seemed to perfectly symbolize a group of plein air artists and the canvas on which their harvest is gathered.
The painting is oil on a course plain-weave canvas, over a mortise and tenon stretcher measuring 29 1/2 in x 23 5/8 in. The upper tacking margin is missing.
The painting has been executed over another painting. This is evident in areas of paint loss and flaking in the top center within the hair of the figure, as well as in other spots where damage has occurred. The underlying painting may have been a partial painting or a completed prior work, the existing tacking margins showing smears and paint strokes in colors which do not appear related to the final painting.
Much of the damage seems related to rough storage and the strips of wood which were nailed through the canvas as a makeshift frame. The hole in the figure's forehead seems too specific, I believe it may have been inflicted by the artist himself.
There are various well-defined fingerprints embedded in the surface of the painting, and the stretcher bears numerals drawn in pencil which are in a similar hand to written numbers in many of the artist's sketchbooks. There are also two tacks at the bottom of the stretcher with remnants of paper still attached, possibly an exhibition label.
I believe the body of the figure was composed from photographs, and that the head of the figure was painted directly from Jean-Antoine Houdon's bronze bust of Voltaire. From this bust the artist had drawn a front-facing study, a left ear with partial head features, and a skull study which appears to have been embellished with features from the bust.
What further highlighted Cézanne's interest in Voltaire was the artist's meticulous attention to detail in his study of the right ear of Jean-Baptiste Pigalle's marble statue of Voltaire. The right ear of Houdon's bust had been obscured with hair, so the artist had apparently sought out and carefully drawn the unobscured right ear from Pigalle's work for his head and ear studies.
The photos of The Fisherman used in this series of blog pages were taken outdoors in full sunlight. Photography of this painting indoors is problematic, and I suspect that is because the painting had been executed outdoors, Cézanne's tribute to Camille Pissarro, painted en plein air.
In the context of the boat and sail in Scene Fantastique the background of the portrait could have no better description than a canvas sail hanging diagonally from the mast out of scene behind and to the right, gently rippling in the breeze to the left.
A small patch of blue at the bottom left corner seems to show a glimpse of water, and an area of lighter blue along the left edge across from the dark spot behind the figure's neck appears to show the sky. The bottom left extremity of the sail in Scene Fantastique also shows a glimpse of water, and FWN 437 Portrait de Victor Chocquet 1876–77, features a similar dark spot in the shadows at the same proximity to the head.
Returning to the United States in 2007 following my humanitarian work on behalf of Burmese refugees in Thailand, I renewed my research of the painting with these blog pages in order to better organize, and eventually share my studies. By then, I had been exploring the life and works of Paul Cézanne since the late 1980s. In my quest to uncover studies related to The Fisherman, I focused on the artist's sketches and drawings as cataloged by Adrien Chappuis.
The Fisherman represented a filter which afforded me a unique perspective on Cézanne's studies, one that other researchers lacked—a key to be tried in various locks, so to speak. The striking resemblance between the subject, the artist's study of Voltaire, and Houdon's bronze bust of Voltaire, could not be mere coincidence.
Addressing the elephant in the room, yes, I have known all along that proving this portrait was painted by Paul Cézanne would be nearly impossible, and I constantly hedged my optimism with pessimism.
Then there is the issue of proving it was Portrait de M. L. A..., although I believe the attribution to Cézanne does not rely on proving it was the portrait exhibited in the Salon of 1882.
Still, this portrait of a man fits the contemporary description published by Théodore Véron, and it is signed.
Every aspect of my theories needed to fit historically, but the history of Houdon's bust of Voltaire was incomplete. This gap apparently prompted Adrien Chappuis to date Cézanne's front-facing drawing by the bust's entry into the Louvre and the artist's documented visits to the museum after that time. This dating disrupted my timeline, but the Louvre's account of the bust's history confirms it had been in Paris before the Commune, leaving the matter open to further investigation.
I had become familiar with the photo and video software and blogging platforms which I had used extensively for my humanitarian work, so repurposing the same assets to organize my Cézanne research was a game changer.
Lacking provenance, I produced the "Origins" video detailing the 19th-century exodus of French emigrants to Argentina and how, by the 1980s, their belongings became a source of affordable French antiques. However, there was a key piece of information on how I became focused on Paul Cézanne which I had omitted from the "Early Discoveries" video because I had nothing to corroborate it.
The described strategy of focusing on French artists due to the volume of French furniture we had imported from Buenos Aires is accurate enough, however it was a painting by another French artist which I had randomly found one day which eventually led me to study Paul Cézanne.
After moving to a new apartment in 2022, while sorting through the long-stored bins of my belongings, I came across a pair of photos of that painting I didn’t know still existed. Now, I can finally make the record complete.
In the late-1980s I worked in one of the largest antique import houses on the West coast. My job consisted of unloading containers, sorting, assembling, repairing, and displaying the furniture, lighting fixtures, ornamental iron and more. As items were sold, I reversed the process to disassemble and load the customer's purchases. With as many as eight containers from overseas and our own semi-truck of American antiques every month it was fast-paced, and I barely noticed many of the items coming and going through the packed 33,000 sf warehouse.
In the midst of loading and unloading I also had a never-ending stream of repair projects to deal with, mirrors to be re-silvered, broken this, scratched that... it was job security to the max.
One day my employer (my uncle) asked me to cover the phones at the front desk while he met with our buyer from Portugal.
Unaccustomed to loitering around, I began writing down the names and foundry marks on some recently arrived bronzes and paintings and I happened to pick up a small painting from a stack leaning against a wall and jotted down the signature "A. Monticelli". We had a set of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists to look up signatures and marks, and I was surprised to find several pages devoted to Adolphe Monticelli.
I interrupted my uncle to show him the painting and the buyer remarked, "Monticelli? Impossible!" My Uncle was unimpressed and pointed out that the painting had sat there for several months priced at less than $200 and that no one had snapped it up.
He welcomed me to investigate it, and on my day off I took it to a museum near Los Angeles which had paintings by Monticelli in its collection. The curator examined the painting, noted that it was correctly painted on a wood panel, and stated that it "looked right". When I asked about value, the curator speculated that at auction it would likely sell between eleven and fifteen thousand dollars.
I related what the curator had said to my uncle who remained unimpressed, so I pulled out the $169 and bought the painting on the spot. He grinned and said: "a fool and his money...".
As I matched the shipping number from the manifest with the painting, I recalled the day it had arrived, the remarkable way it was painted, and the fact that it had lacked a frame. Not having a frame was unusual, even more unusual was that it was a portrait. Nearly all of the paintings we imported from Buenos Aires were hotel room art, nearly identical bland landscapes in nearly identical gilt frames. Decorators discarded the canvases and had beveled mirrors cut for the frames, local artists would buy the ornate frames and then paint-over the canvases.
Assuming the frame would arrive in a later container, I placed the painting in an area where I kept broken or incomplete items. Now, I could see it had been unwrapped, priced "as is", and was in rough condition. When it first came in, I hadn’t even noticed the four rough strips of wood nailed through the canvas, possibly serving as an improvised frame. The strip at the bottom partially covered the signature, and it seemed like the wooden strips had been in place for a long time.
Taking the time to look at it more closely, like the Monticelli, it was remarkably different, nothing like the hotel art we normally received from Buenos Aires. I was by no means a budding art collector, but it was unlike anything I had ever seen, and priced at less than $300, I gulped and made the decision to buy it.
This was before I had even found any books on Monticelli, so I didn't buy the painting for any reason other than its unique workmanship and the fact that it came in with the Monticelli......a shot in the dark. When I took it outside to put it in my car, in the light I could see how extensive the damage was and I thought of one of my uncle’s favorite antique dealer sayings, "Just remember it comes with a guarantee, if it breaks in half on your way home...I guarantee you own both halves". However, I also saw how the colors had been spectacularly transformed in the sunlight.
When our buyer from Argentina visited, I asked him to check his notes on the two paintings to determine whether he had purchased them from a private party or a dealer. He could only recall that they were part of a small group of paintings bought at a public auction on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
In my research of Adolphe Monticelli, I had learned that he was French, that he had been friends with Paul Cézanne since the 1860s, and that Vincent van Gogh thought highly of his work. Whenever I was looking for books on Monticelli, I would grab any books on Cézanne and other French artists that Monticelli may have known. I knew who van Gogh was because I had seen photos of several of his well known paintings in a magazine. To be honest, the name Paul Cézanne meant nothing to me at that time, except that where the Benezit had surprised me with several pages on Monticelli, it astonished me with what seemed like an entire chapter on Cézanne, which still meant very little since the books were in printed in French.
While I had to drive 50 miles to the UCLA art library to find any reference books on Monticelli, my local libraries had plenty of books on Paul Cézanne and the Impressionists. As shown at the start of the "Early Discoveries" video, I quickly came across works by Cézanne which were strikingly similar to my painting. I also quickly found a photo of a similar half-glazed jug on display in the artist’s studio. (visible in the background of this page)
One book featured photos of his front facing drawing of Voltaire and the bronze bust by Houdon it was drawn from, both of which resembled the subject of my painting.
Remarkably, Cézanne's drawing bore a stronger resemblance to the subject of my portrait than to Houdon's Voltaire. While both the drawing and the portrait subject depicted a man who resembled Voltaire, they lacked the defining feature that would unmistakably identify him—his signature smile.
It was 2006 when I finally located a photo of the three-quarter right profile view of Houdon's bust of Voltaire at the Louvre website, and it became obvious that the bust had been the source of the head of the subject in The Fisherman.
At first, I thought the portrait may have been painted from that photo. Yet when I considered the evident age of the painting and the modern photos displayed at the museum website, it seemed more likely that it had been painted directly from the bust. However, from everything I had learned by 2006, if the artist had painted a portrait from that bust which entered the Louvre in 1880, he didn't paint it there.
One of our customers heard the story of the Monticelli and expressed interest in buying the painting, adding that he wanted to take it to New York and have it looked at first, I agreed. I mentioned my suspicions about another painting being a possible work by Paul Cézanne, and he asked if I had a photo he could take along, which I gave him. When he returned, he offered me $11,000 for the Monticelli, which I accepted. He also offered me $50,000 for the other painting, which I declined.
Over the years and several moves, I had lost track of any photos I had of the Monticelli which was sold back in 1989. I felt that mentioning a painting by Monticelli and having nothing to show of it would serve no useful purpose in the Early Discoveries video, so I left it out.
Some final historical thoughts on Monticelli and Cézanne. Cézanne's biographers tell us that following the Salon of 1882, and prior to the elder painter's death in 1886, the artist had spent a great deal of time with Monticelli in and around Marseille.
I theorize that following its exhibition in the Salon of 1882 (as Portrait de M. L. A...), Cézanne gifted (read exiled) The Fisherman to Monticelli, and when he died both paintings were sold in his estate sale. The buyer of the paintings then embarked for Argentina from the port of Marseille. Cézanne was probably glad it was gone, removing the temptation to take it back and destroy it. As I mentioned elsewhere, I believe the hole piercing the forehead of the subject was inflicted by the artist himself.
Although it eventually became a tribute to Pissarro, I believe it had originally been composed as a self-portrait study.
I have attributed my painting to Paul Cézanne based on:
* Cézanne's front facing drawing of Voltaire after the bronze bust by Houdon, which may represent a front facing study for the figure composed for The Fisherman.
* The 1778 bronze bust of Voltaire by Jean-Antoine Houdon, which I believe to have been the source for the head of the subject in The Fisherman.
* The signature on the painting which appears to read PCezanne.
* Cézanne's front-facing self-portrait study, one of his earliest, and the ca 1871 photograph of the artist I suggest it was drawn from, both of which appear to be related to his drawing of Voltaire after Houdon. This self-portrait may potentially represent another front-facing study for the body composed for The Fisherman, and the same photograph may also be related to the composition of the painting.
* Cézanne's study of a solitary right ear after the marble statue of Voltaire by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle. This study of a clearly drawn ear by Cézanne demonstrates the artist's specific interest in the right profile of Voltaire.
* Cézanne's study of a left ear, drawn with features of an unusual partial profile, the ear of which appears to have been drawn from the left ear of Houdon's bust of Voltaire. This study is another of the artist's earliest studies to feature an ear.
* Cézanne's three-quarter left profile drawing of a skull, his earliest skull study, dated ca 1868.(FWN 2227) Overlay comparisons suggest that this skull represents another drawing made from Houdon's bust of Voltaire.
* Cézanne's drawing of a cup, which appears to be a face mapping tool based on his studies of Voltaire's ears and facial features.
* Cézanne's 1875 painting Scene Fantastique, which features an old man highlighted in front of the sail, and what appears to be a round jug on the riverbank in the foreground below him.
* A group photograph featuring Cézanne and Pissarro ca 1874, which appears to be the source of the subject's torso, hand and arm details in The Fisherman, as well as the source of Cézanne's drawing of a hand listed below, all drawn from the image of Édouard Béliard, the man standing next to Pissarro. The right leg of Béliard also appears to have the details of a raised right knee painted over it, and what may be the details of a sash painted at his waist. This photo also appears to be the source of the figure highlighted in front of the sail in Scene Fantastique, and the forward-facing man with the beret seated next to him, whom I believe represents Cézanne himself.
* A three-quarter profile study possibly drawn from another photo of Pissarro in his garden, which I suspect to be an early study for the subject of The Fisherman. This study, plausibly drawn from a photo of Camille Pissarro, has clearly been drawn in a way that makes it unrecognizable as a portrait of Pissarro. Yet taken in the context of Cézanne drawing from that photo, we are seeing the artist create an avatar of Pissarro, an embodiment.
* Cézanne's study of a left hand, apparently the left hand of Édouard Béliard from the photo taken in Camille Pissarro's garden, which resembles (in reverse) the subject's right hand in The Fisherman.
* Photos of a similar partially glazed jug in Cézanne's studio collection of still-life objects.
* Portrait de M. L. A..., the long lost unidentified portrait of a man exhibited in the Salon of 1882.
A great deal of my research is based on Cézanne's drawing of Voltaire after Jean-Antoine Houdon's 1778 bronze bust, the same bust of Voltaire which appears to have been the source for the head of the subject in The Fisherman.
Description from The Drawings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné by Adrien Chappuis:
1018. AFTER HOUDON: Voltaire, circa 1890
8 1/8 X 5 1/8 inches--20,6 X 13 cm. Page XIX from the
sketchbook BS I. Pencil. Verso: blank page.
"Head of the writer and poet François-Marie Arouet Voltaire, seen front face. After the bronze bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon in the Louvre."
At first glance, the dating of ca 1890 for this drawing seems to present a great disparity between my own theories and the date assigned by Adrien Chappuis, the expert who had organized Cézanne's vast collection of drawings. I can only offer that for his dating, Chappuis had proceeded with the evidence which was available to him, while I am proceeding with new evidence.
This new evidence, provided by my studies of the artist's works through the filter of The Fisherman, has led me to discover that two of Cézanne's earliest studies of ears appear to be Voltaire's right ear after the marble statue by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (Chappuis 360 1871-92), and Voltaire's left ear from the same bronze bust by Houdon (Chappuis 484 1880-82). Neither ear study source was mentioned by Chappuis who had made the source attribution of the front-facing study of Voltaire.
Taken in the context of the front-facing study of Voltaire and the subject of The Fisherman, these overlooked ear studies suggest the artist's interest in specific details of Voltaire's profiles. To substantiate my dating for these studies and my painting, it's all about the artist's access to Houdon's bust of Voltaire.
It's impossible to know whether Chappuis was aware of the complete history of Houdon's bust of Voltaire prior to its arrival at the Louvre in 1880. Through the filter of The Fisherman, I believe I can show that the history of the bust included access to private study for Cézanne in the mid 1870's, and the likelihood that he had also studied it in the prior decade as well.
I suggest that the two studies after Houdon's bust were drawn c. 1874-75, and the right profile ear after Pigalle's marble statue was drawn between 1871 and 1875. Additionally, I can now say with high confidence that both the bust and statue of Voltaire had been accessible and in close proximity to Cézanne's known residences, and to the Académie Suisse ever since he had arrived in Paris. In fact, there is a third study I attribute to the bust of Voltaire, a drawing of a skull c. 1868.(FWN 2227)
In the following presentation, I describe how Cézanne's front facing drawing after Voltaire differed from its source, the bust by Houdon. In a later study, I will show how the drawing of Voltaire may have been more than a simple study after Houdon's bust by demonstrating how it appears to be related to one of the artist's earliest self-portrait drawings from the 1870s, and to a photo of the artist which John Rewald dated c. 1871.
The provenance of Houdon's bronze bust prior to 1871 is obscure. According to an account from the book Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment (Anne L. Poulet, Guilhem Scherf, Ulrike Mathies), the bust was discovered by the sculptor Adolphe-Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume in 1871, "in the public rubble" of a monument burned down at the time of the Paris Commune. The bust was then eventually given by Geoffroy-Dechaume to the state in 1876 and has been in the Louvre collection since 1880. This is the same provenance provided for the bust at the Louvre website.
The bust's officially vague history prior to being donated to the state in 1876 seemed odd, surely Geoffroy-Dechaume had informed the authorities where he had recovered it in 1871. Why wouldn't that location be included in the exhibition history for Houdon's bust?
In lieu of further information regarding which monument the bust had been discovered in the ruins of, and its whereabouts during the five years between its recovery and its being gifted to the state, it seemed logical to speculate that the bust had been placed on public display in Paris at some time during those intervening years. Cézanne may have first seen the bust during that period, or perhaps even prior to the war in the "monument" where it was later recovered by Geoffroy-Dechaume.
In his biography of Cézanne, John Rewald provided us with the artist's whereabouts in the post-commune Paris of 1871: "Cézanne lived for six months in the same house as Solari, 5 Rue de Chevreus, but in December 1871 he moved to 45 Rue de Jussieu, opposite the Halle aux Vins."
The Solari mentioned by Rewald was the sculptor Philippe Solari, born in Aix-en-Provence in 1840. Solari was a contemporary and friend of Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola who had attended the Académie Suisse in Paris along with Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Armand Guillaumin, et al. While it is significant that Rewald places Cézanne in the same house as Solari in Paris during the year and month that Houdon's bust of Voltaire had been recovered, the question of whether Solari was acquainted with fellow sculptor Geoffroy-Dechaume remains open.
Looking back at my notes years later, I realized that I had never determined where Adolphe-Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume had lived in order to discover if any monuments had burned down near his home. I had gotten as far as finding an 1880's map of the monuments destroyed during the Paris Commune and then became sidetracked by the sheer number of sites. I knew Geoffroy-Dechaume's location would be important in determining Cézanne's potential access to the bust in relation to my theoretical timeline, so I went back to work tracing the history of Houdon's bust.
Back on the scent, I soon located an online biography of the sculptor which mentioned Geoffroy-Dechaume's wedding in 1841;
"He married Sidonie Mouton with who he has 4 children : Adolphe-Louis, who will later become his student and partner, Marie, Amélie and Valentine. The family lives on quai de la Tournelle, quai d’Anjou and in the Valmondois village."
The same online biography featured an image of an oil painting by Franck Bail (1858-1924), Portrait of A.V. Geoffroy-Dechaume in his workshop of the Saint-Louis island, painted from a photo with the description "A. Callery, A.V. Geoffroy-Dechaume’s workshop on the 13, quai d’Anjou. Old photograph (before. 1893) Geoffroy-Dechaume collection".
*There is a placard commemorating Geoffroy-Dechaume at the front of 13, quai d'Anjou
Starting with that address, I began plotting in Google Earth the known addresses where Cézanne had lived and studied, the various museums, and the sites which had been destroyed during the Paris Commune. Surprisingly, the house where Solari lived was just over a mile from 13, quai d'Anjou, and the house Cézanne had moved to in December 1871 on Rue de Jussieu, was only a half mile away from Geoffroy-Dechaume's workshop.
In a subsequent search for 13, quai d'Anjou I was astonished to learn that Cézanne's good friend and fellow Académie Suisse classmate Armand Guillaumin, a fellow member of the School of Pontoise, had taken the studio once occupied by Charles-François Daubigny which was in the same building as Geoffroy-Dechaume's workshop at 13, quai d'Anjou. Many Cézanne historians have mentioned the artist visiting and working with Guillaumin in his studio on the quai d'Anjou during the mid-1870's.
In his biography of Guillaumin, Christopher Gray shared comments from a pair of letters Guillaumin had written to Pissarro in the aftermath of the exhibition in 1874, and followed with some information about where Guillaumin and Cézanne had lived:
"At this time Guillaumin was living with his mother at 2, Avenue Binet in Levallois-Perret. Cézanne must have been a fairly frequent visitor, for on at least one occasion his father Pierre-Auguste Cézanne(sic), dined with Mme Guillaumin when he had come to Paris.
Since 1872, when Cézanne had had a son by his mistress, Hortense Fiquet, he had been living at 120, rue Vaugirard, a small two-story house. He seems to have shared his studio there with Guillaumin, for both give that address in the catalogue of the exposition of 1874.
About this time Guillaumin rented Daubigny's old studio at 13, Quai d'Anjou, on the Ile Saint-Louis, which he in turn seems to have shared with Cézanne."
(Armand Guillaumin - Christopher Gray, The Pequot Press, 1972 p. 15)
John Rewald provides another account of the two artist's whereabouts in 1874-75;
"In 1874, Pissarro, Cézanne, and Guillaumin participated in the first exhibition of the Impressionist group. In the catalogue, the latter two listed their address as 120 rue de Vaugirard, but this does not necessarily mean that they shared a studio there.
Guillaumin may still have been living with his mother at 73, rue de Bouffon [sic] yet may have found it more convenient (for the return of his canvases or other reasons) to use Cézanne's place, the more so as Cézanne spent part of that year in Auvers and, later, in the South.
They must have seen a good deal of each other in those days and their association was to become even closer when, in January 1875, Cézanne moved to 15, quai d'Anjou, while Guillaumin lived at number 13."
(Studies in Impressionism - Harry N. Abrams - New York - 1985 pp. 105-106)
Coincidentally, in 1866, Daubigny had been elected to the jury of the Paris Salon, where he was an ardent defender of the paintings submitted by Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne et al. And, Cézanne's good friend Antoine Guillemet had studied with Daubigny.
It was Daubigny who had introduced Monet and Pissarro to art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in London during the Franco-Prussian war, and Daubigny was a longtime friend, associate, and former neighbor of Geoffroy-Dechaume at 13, quai d'Anjou.
Although I had sorted out where Geoffroy-Dechaume had lived and could place Cézanne in that same building by at least summer 1874, I still felt that Cézanne had first studied the bust prior to the Franco-Prussian war and Paris Commune.
I returned to the question of the original location of the bust of Voltaire, the monument which had been subject to the scorched earth policy of the Commune as it faced defeat in 1871.
With time and the ongoing digitization of museum collections new images become available, and I think I have now solved the question of where the bust of Voltaire had originally been on display.
Photographic evidence reveals that the monument where Geoffroy-Dechaume had recovered Houdon's bust of Voltaire was located barely half a mile from his 13, quai d'Anjou workshop, the former headquarters of the Paris Commune, the Hôtel de Ville.
The bust in the photo looks every bit like it was pulled from the rubble, Voltaire's smile seeming more ironic than ever.
The questions of why the Hôtel de Ville was omitted from the history of the bust, and why it has remained so for over 150 years remain open. Geoffroy-Dechaume obviously knew where he had found it. Fortunately, the caption of the photo is unambiguous.
(I have emailed the Louvre with my discoveries, and while they confirmed receiving the information, they have not updated the history of Houdon's bust.)
This shows the likelihood that Cézanne had both the opportunity and the proximity to study the bust long before it was placed in the Louvre, long before it was recovered by Geoffroy-Dechaume, and potentially at any time after Guillaumin moved into 13, quai d'Anjou prior to the bust being donated to the State in 1876.
It is possible that the left profile ear study from Voltaire's bust and the right ear study from the statue of Voltaire by Pigalle may also have been drawn prior to the war as part of the ongoing face and ear studies for the artist's planned series of self-portraits as well as portraits in general. The statue by Pigalle would have been available before or after the war, whereas the probability of Cézanne's access to the bust following the war is so far limited to Guillaumin taking the studio at 13, quai d'Anjou. I think the front-facing study was drawn from the bust later, on loan from Geoffroy-Dechaume.
If I am correct that the artist had studied the bust at the Hotel de Ville, the recovery of the bust from the ruins would have represented a miracle to Cézanne, who would have been grieving over the many important works of Delacroix lost in the flames.
Early on, it seemed like an epiphany when I realized that both the painted subject of The Fisherman, and the subject of Cézanne's front facing drawing, appeared to share Houdon's bust of Voltaire as their model.
As the years passed, I continued searching for additional images of Voltaire to compare with the artist's drawings and the painting of The Fisherman. I became fascinated by the fact that in almost every image I had found of Voltaire, whether in paintings, etchings, pastels, or statues, he was traditionally depicted with his trademark grin.
It seemed like more than an extraordinary coincidence that the subject of Cézanne's front facing drawing, and the subject of The Fisherman would be among the very few likenesses of Voltaire in which he was not portrayed with a smile. On the part of Cézanne, this was not surprising, for the artist habitually avoided portraying any of his subjects with a smile......right?
I think it goes back to looking at Cézanne's life and works through the filter of The Fisherman, without it the question of Voltaire being carefully depicted without the smile that so defined his personality might never be asked, and even though Chappuis had posted the side by side photos of the bust and the study, he hadn't mentioned the artist's omission of that defining detail.
There was a time when asking something as simple as "did Cézanne ever paint portrait sitters and other figures with smiles?" would have been nearly impossible to answer, as it was too hard to view enough of his works to form an accurate conclusion. Fortunately, we now have the Cézanne Online Catalogue Raisonné and I can view images of all of the artist's portraits and figure paintings, and have a definitive answer in less than half an hour. Simply amazing!
Among Cézanne's portraits I found an unfinished study in oil of a smiling Paul Jr c. 1885 (FWN 470) which appears to be Cézanne's only portrait subject painted with a smile.
Among the artist's figure paintings, I noted a few more subjects with facial expressions which might be interpreted as being smiles. From that small group of possibles, I was surprised to find there was one subject who not only seemed to be smiling, but also appeared central to the theme of the painting.
In Cézanne's painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ca 1870 (FWN 610), we find a setting and theme which hardly seem related to Manet's Déjeuner. I had seen smaller plates of this painting many times in books without noticing the details.
Seeing it in a large magnified image, what I found most fascinating about this subject, was his remarkable resemblance to the man whose smiling visage, or lack thereof in Cézanne's drawing and my painting, had inspired the search in the first place..... Voltaire... and dressed as the artist had often depicted fishermen in his figure compositions, in a long sleeved white shirt.
Something that jumps out at me through the filter of The Fisherman, is the fact that this depiction of Voltaire does not appear to be based on Houdon's bust, it is a much younger Voltaire.
I have studied Voltaire for nearly as long as I have studied Cézanne, and one of the first things I learned from John Rewald was that: "Cézanne was a diligent student, especially interested in dead languages. For two sous he would turn out a hundred lines of Latin, and during his school years he frequently won prizes for calculus, Greek and Latin, science, and history."
(Paul Cézanne - Spring Books 1948 p. 5)
Among the first things I learned about Voltaire were the various theories of how he came up with the nom de plume Voltaire, and since Cezanne's forte had been Latin, one particular theory found at the Wikipedia article had remained in my memory: "Arouet adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille. Its origin is unclear. *It is an anagram of AROVET LI, the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, and the initial letters of le jeune ("the young")".
*Attributed to Christopher Thacker - Voltaire - Taylor & Francis. 1971 p. 3
The Latinized surname remained a blinking light in my mind, and it was during a 2025 update to my Portrait de M. L. A... Studies page that the AROVET LI anagram explanation by Thacker again came to mind during my umpteenth study into the possible interpretations of the initials M. L. A....
I wondered how Thacker had interpreted "LI" as "Le Jeune"?
When I located a .pdf of Thacker's book online and looked up the reference, I found that Thacker's exact words were: "He changed his name to Voltaire—probably an anagram on AROVET Le Ieune, or Arouet junior".
Thacker's interpretations took a bit of thought to translate as the "initial letters" for le jeune are "l & j", and the Latin translation of "the young" is simply iuvenis. After considerable searching through various biographies, I found the explanation was that in the 18th century the letters U & J were typographically interchangeable with V & I, respectively.
At face value, the explanation seemed plausible, yet Voltaire was famously known as a juggler of words, and like Cezanne, was well-versed in Greek and Latin at a young age, so I wondered if there were other possible interpretations. Voltaire could have made a play on both French and Latin by adding "le" to the Latin word for young, "iuvenes", to arrive at the initials "LI". Whether translating the French words "jeune (young)" or "le jeune (the young)", the Latin translates to iuvenes and iuvenis respectively, there is no L. Furthermore, the interpretation is in the eye of the beholder as to whether LI came before or after AROVET, the anagram Voltaire applies to either.
Along with the U=V, both the "Le Iuvenes" and "Le Ieune" arrangements appear to have added the L&I to the anagram Voltaire to make possible the reversal of the syllables of Airvault, his Maternal family home town in the Poitou region.
I found it very interesting that the arrangement "AROVET LI" could be expressed "Arouet the young" differentiating father and son, or as LI AROVET "the young Arouet", which was what Cézanne had carefully depicted in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. It appears possible that Cézanne had seized upon the same Voltairian wordplay logic to create the persona "LI AROVET" as a name for this figure based on the likeness of Voltaire.
As regards a title for the portrait, the rearranged Latinized spelling also formatted the surname to fit French typography where the surname comes last.
I suspect this figure of a young Voltaire had been conceived as a puzzle challenge for his childhood friend Émile Zola to sort out among the other characters and clues in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, and that his inclusion in that work was an indication that he was a subject of ongoing or future studies.
To me this was the same unusual attention to detail as the Voltaire/Pissarro figure highlighted in front of the sail in Scene Fantastique, carefully detailed to be recognizable as the Voltaire/Pissarro figure from its companion portrait The Fisherman.
It is also interesting that the figure in the foreground of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe would be posed in such an obvious manner pointing at him with an open thumb suggesting the letter V. This figure seems to be saying "look at Voltaire". Through the filter of The Fisherman and in the context of the artist's studies of Voltaire, two aspects of this figure which seem exaggerated to me are this figure's bald, skull-like head, and his large "jug handle" ear. This was the artist's old style "teacup handle" portrait ear on steroids.
Putting aside some of the dramatic psychoanalysis of this painting, the Femme Fatale offering the forbidden fruit, etc., I see nothing out of the ordinary, just people in the park, which had been a theme the artist had often used during that period. However, the smiling Voltaire figure, that huge ear, and the skull-like head are extraordinary. These oddities suggest the ongoing ear, head, and skull studies based on Voltaire.
The upturned top hat should be noticed too. Among the series of pictorial puzzles of the 1870s, there are two featuring upturned top hats which are associated with a figure, FWN 610 Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, and FWN 628 Une moderne Olympia.
Additionally, there are two figure compositions from that era which include top hats which are shown right-side up, yet are not associated with any figure, both of which are literally levitating in mid-air, FWN 634 Les Pêcheurs and FWN 649 L'Éternel Féminin. Interestingly, all four of these figure compositions feature a subject thought by some to represent the artist.
In my opinion based on decades of study, since there are no photos showing the artist wearing a top hat, and among the eight self-portraits where the artist is wearing a head covering none feature a top hat, the two with upturned top hats are not plausible as narrative self-portraits.
The two paintings with the disassociated right-side up floating top hats both feature figures who are plausible as narrative self-portraits of the artist.
It is a great coincidence that in another painting featuring the Voltaire figure, this time highlighted in front of the sail in Les Pêcheurs aka Scene Fantastique, we see a similarly obvious clue from the artist. This time, the figure shown from behind in the left foreground has been highlighted against a sandy background, and his right elbow and walking stick have been painted in a way which suggests the letter "M". In fact, it appears to have been re-touched to exaggerate it with a point. I believe this figure represented Manet, turning away from the Impressionists in 1874, while Pissarro and Cézanne watch from the boat.
Just as I had done, in composing Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the artist must have sought out additional depictions of Voltaire, and for some reason he had uncharacteristically painted a recognizable likeness of him, smile and all, with blond hair in the manner of Maurice Quentin de La Tour.
(Cézanne: The Early Years 1859 - 1872 p. 25)
There seems to be some misconception that Cézanne was the country bumpkin from Aix, and that Émile Zola was the intellectual of their youth.
They had both grown up with similar tastes in music, art and literature, and they and their friends had shared spirited conversations on many subjects and Cézanne's voice had always served him well.
Later in their adult lives, anyone who could read, could understand the words published in Zola's novels, writers can describe fictional characters in ways that allow the reader to "know" that character, to like or dislike them.
During the artist's lifetime very few people would ever view Cézanne's paintings, much less understand the language of his art. It would be like giving Zola's books to someone who can't read. It seems clear that Cézanne's intellect allowed him to understand Zola's novels, but Zola's intellect could not grasp the significance of Cézanne's art.
Despite Zola's financial success as an author, it seems that in the end Cézanne's brush was mightier than Zola's pen in terms of discovery, innovation, and historical significance. Zola's bones reside inside The Pantheon in Paris, yet Cézanne's works reside in great museums around the World.
As for financial success during their lives, Zola wins hands-down. Yet it would be interesting to see a comparison of the value of their combined works. I would conservatively guess that the value of just the paintings which Cézanne had gifted to Zola, would now exceed the value of Zola's income from all of his books combined. Ironically, the most valuable books produced by Zola are likely the one's he gifted to Cézanne.
It is doubtful that anyone at the Salon would have realized that Cézanne had invoked Houdon's bronze bust of Voltaire heroically facing death in the year he died, and that he had then risen Phoenix-like from the ashes of insurrection as an aging fisherman facing a similar fate, as predicted by his head transforming into a skull, and inevitably becoming immortalized in bronze.
While it is clearly evident that the painting bears a signature, some of the paint seems to have oxidized, or in some way changed color over the years. In the proper raking light, the residue of the paint becomes more visible, and the signature appears to read PCezanne.
The horizontal line across the signature indicates the edge of one of the strips of wood which had been nailed through the canvas into the stretcher as a makeshift frame.
*Note: The following overlay video represents my concept of the difficult to view signature based on my studies of macro photos taken in full outdoor light which brought out details of the signature which I had not previously been able to see. The comparison begins at zero overlay and then advances to full overlay and back. At the points where the overlay flashes on and off, there is zero overlay.
Update September 2025
I have spent 38 years studying the life and works of Paul Cézanne in search of evidence to support my attribution of The Fisherman.
Over the years I have endeavored to balance any optimism I may feel towards my findings, with the same pessimism any evidence I present to the Catalogue Raisonné committee will receive. If I was on the committee, my first impression of this signature would have been to consider it an outlier due to the angle it is painted.
Yet I wonder how the three-member committee responded to the signature when I submitted my research to them in January 2015. I have to wonder, because there was no aspect of my research which was mentioned in the short refusal I received. Thinking about it ten years later, if I were a committee member, I would have gone to the online catalogue and compared the signature with all known portrait signatures. That said, there is no time like the present to balance my pessimism with optimism.
Thanks to the amazing online catalogue, I was able to view all of the artist's portraits over a single cup of coffee, and in doing so I made a tally of how many portraits were signed by the artist. As it turns out, all of Cezanné's signed portraits are outliers.
The online catalogue lists one-hundred and fifty-eight portraits, of that number, one-hundred forty-seven portraits are unsigned, one portrait is initialled, and ten portraits are signed in various locations and various colors.
FWN 395
Tête de femme (portrait présumé Gabrielle Meley) 1864
Signed lower left: P. Cezanne 1864
FWN 396
Tête d'homme 1865
Signed and dated above right shoulder in red: P. CEZANE 65
FWN 399
Portrait d'Antony Valabrègue 1866, Spring
Signed lower right in red, overlaid in black: P. Cezanne
Submitted to the Salon of 1866 - Rejected
FWN 403
Portrait de l'artiste c.1866
Signed lower right in red: P. CEZANNE
FWN 423
Portrait du peintre Achille Emperaire 1867–68
Signed lower right in black: P. Cezanne
Submitted to the Salon of 1870 - Rejected
FWN 429
L'Homme au chapeau de paille (Gustave Boyer) c.1871
Signed lower right in red: P. Cezanne
FWN 437
Portrait de Victor Chocquet 1876–77
Signed at left in red: P. Cezanne
Exhibited as Tête d'homme; Etude Paris 1877
FWN 439
Portrait de Victor Chocquet assis 1877
Signed lower right in red: P. Cezanne
FWN 463
Portrait de l'artiste c.1882
Signed lower right in brown: P. Cezanne
FWN 505
Le Fumeur accoudé c.1891
Signed: P. Cezanne at left on the table
I have not yet made a search of Cezanne's drawing catalogue looking specifically for signatures, however there is an early self-portrait drawing which is a major part of my studies which features a signature. The study, Chappuis #400, had long been accepted by experts and featured in many books, although Chappuis had mentioned, without explanation, that "the authenticity of the signature has been questioned".
My studies of this drawing (see below) were included when I submitted my research to the online catalogue committee in 2015, and at the time the drawings had not been added to the online catalogue yet.
In late 2024, I went to the online catalogue to retreive the FWN number for the drawing to include in my presention, and found that it had been omitted from the accepted works.
If you search "Literature" by any book Chappuis #400 was included in, it appears among the images for that book as "N.D." without an FWN number, and without an associated information/photo page. There is no explanation why the long-accepted self-portrait drawing had been omitted from the catalogue.
Regarding the signature on the drawing, it is written in a similar location, and at a similar angle (reversed) to the signature on The Fisherman and I believe the artist had purposely signed the drawing in that manner to associate it with The Fisherman.
Another discovery I made that day was when I searched for the catalogue number of the front-facing drawing of Voltaire, (FWN 3011-22b D'après Houdon: Voltaire c.1890 CH 1018). Chappuis had attributed Houdon’s bust of Voltaire in the Louvre collection as the source of this drawing.
When I looked it up, listed under “Additional Materials” for FWN 3011-22b, instead of the bronze bust in the Louvre, there was a photo of a similar marble bust captioned: “Jean-Antoine Houdon, Voltaire (François Marie Arouet de Voltaire), marble, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.” According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art website, the provenance for the bust in the photo reads: “This bust from the world-famous Stroganoff collection in Saint Petersburg was presumably acquired by Count Alexander Sergeyvitch Stroganoff directly from Houdon during the count's years in Paris from 1770 to 1779."
I couldn't help but feel a bit paranoid after discovering that two of my research topics were altered by the catalogue committee at some point after I had submitted my presentation in 2015.
I sent an email to the online catalogue inquiring why the marble bust, which would not have been accessible to Cezanne, was pictured in place of the bronze bust now at the Louvre which was attributed by Chappuis. They did not respond to my email, but a month or so later I found that the image of the marble bust had been replaced with the front-facing photo of Houdon's bronze bust in the Louvre.
I left the issue of the self-portrait study alone, unlike the photo of the marble bust which was obviously incorrect, the removal of the self-portrait was likely the act of one of the three catalogue committee members. I invite the readers to review the forbidden self-portrait study, and form their own opinion on the plausibility of its authenticity.
Description from The Drawings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné by Adrien Chappuis:
400. Self-Portrait Of The Artist, circa 1875
6 X 5 inches--15,2 X 12,7 cm. Corners Cut. Black Crayon. Verso: blank page. Head and shoulders of Cézanne, with a great deal of shadow, hatching, and stumping. In the right background a wine glass, with the ledge on which it rests, stands out light against the shadow. Signature lower left, of which the authenticity has been questioned; the question remains open.
In an earlier segment, I examined the differences between Cézanne's drawing of Voltaire and its source. In the following presentations, I will show the similarities between the drawing of Voltaire, one of Cézanne's earliest self-portrait drawings, and a photograph of the artist ca 1871.
There was another change made to Voltaire's appearance which was as remarkable as the omission of his smile. It was the amount by which Cézanne had shortened the nose. In these comparisons, it seems clearly evident that the nose had been based on Cézanne's own nose, indicating that the artist's drawing after Houdon was in-effect a self-portrait study partially based on his photo.
Based on my theory that the early self-portrait drawing was related to the front-facing study of Voltaire which appears plausible as an alternate head for the figure of The Fisherman, I decided to make an overlay between the self-portrait and the painting. I sized and positioned the overlay based on the angle at the top of the right lapel of the artist's coat, which seemed to match the angle of the opening of the fisherman's shirt.
I followed the angle of the lapel to where it intersected with the shoulder of the fisherman in order to establish the position of the top of the artist's right shoulder, which blends into the shadow making it difficult to discern. (The final overlay sequence with the color inverted, showed enough contrast to confirm the placement)
This placed the left shoulder of the drawing slightly higher than the painted left shoulder, adding to the drawn subject's bulk. I noted that the vertical shading of the fold of the coat below the left shoulder closely resembled the manner of the shading of the folds of the painted left shirtsleeve, and that the right lapel of the artist's coat seemed to be drawn based on the shadow of the folded-over shirt collar of the fisherman.
While it was difficult to discern between the artist's right shoulder and the shadow above it, the shadow of the drawing clearly occupies the same space as the shadow in the painting. The various matching features suggested that like the drawing of Voltaire, the self-portrait may have represented a front facing self-portrait study based on the body which I believe the artist had composed for the subject of The Fisherman.
The availability of images for comparisons fluctuates with time, and as I find new, or perhaps better versions of period photos online, I can often clarify my theories in new ways. A good example is the full-size version of the photo from the comparisons above, which had been primarily based on the head and shoulders of the self-portrait study. I decided to produce a series of overlay images with the full-size photo and the painting.
The comparison of the painting and the drawing had been aligned with the lapel of the artist's coat, which happened to coincide with the most logical match of the heads and shoulders. This was not the case with the photo, in which the artist was wearing a vest which he had apparently omitted from his self-portrait study. On a hunch, for this overlay I decided to size and align the photo of the painting based solely on the outline of the artist's shoulders.
I found that without having rotated either image, the shoulders of the artist matched the painting almost exactly, and what was even more fascinating was that the angle of the opening of the fisherman's shirt was now aligned with the angle of the artist's vest in the photo, in the same way it had matched the artist's lapel in the self-portrait study.
This comparison suggests that the photo of the artist had been the source of the basic outline of the shoulders and upper arms of the subject in the painting, and that this body may have either originally been composed as a self-portrait, or later considered for one which would feature the artist's front facing head on the fisherman's body, with perhaps some variation of the positions of the arms and hands.
I suggest that the front facing study of Voltaire's head, the studies of Voltaire's ears, and the painting of the fisherman which appears to have been based on the artist's own form, had all been preparations for the artist's series of self-portraits which began in 1875 after nine years had passed since his previous self-portrait.
Just as the artist had apparently embellished his facial features in the self-portrait drawing with what appears to have been a composite of his own features from the photo incorporated into his study of Voltaire, I believe he had used the well-defined details of the man's torso, arms, hands, and coat from the Pissarro garden photo to add details to what had been his own featureless form in this photo.
Furthermore, I suggest that the fisherman's body, which appears to have been hand-built by the artist, went on to be visualized as a lay figure which represented a basic front-facing template for the arms, shoulders, and torsos of various future portraits both male and female. The apparent formula being that along with the variant head positions, the simple reorientation of the forearms and hands from the elbows down could provide many poses.
It has been important for me to keep in mind that while I have concentrated on the evolution of the artist's portrait composition techniques which I believe had come to fruition with his composition of The Fisherman, during the early 1870's he had begun working alongside Camille Pissarro and was equally engaged not only with his evolving techniques for landscapes, but also still lifes, watercolors, and figure paintings, which were painted in several distinct styles.
This ear is drawn in an academic manner, and among Cézanne's drawings this single well drawn study of an ear is extremely rare, and perhaps even one of a kind. It is an enigma, and among the chronological listing of Chappuis, it is the first study of an ear to be found in the catalogue to that point (plate 360).
Author's notes Plate 360.
"Studies: An Ear, and a male figure, 1877-1880
7 5/8 x 4 5/8 inches -- 19,4 x 11,8 cm. Page LIII from the sketchbook CP I. Pencil. Verso No.675.
(a) Top: Study of a right ear. -- (b) Below : half-length study of a male nude, his arm raised as if to repel someone ; copy after an unidentified engraving. Cf. No. 87 This study seems to have been utilized for the subject "Struggle of Love";
See Venturi Nos. 379,380,897, the male figure, in reverse, of the couple lower right.
Bibliography: Venturi, Vol. I, under No. 1281 (not reproduced)"
There is not much information here as regards the description of the ear, however it is an interesting revelation by Chappuis that the male figure shown in the same plate "seems to have been utilized for the subject Struggle of Love", as "the male figure (from the drawing), in reverse, of the couple lower right".
This comment about Cézanne using a reversed version of a drawing is important.
While it may have been wishful thinking, at first glance it occurred to me that the ear may have represented Cézanne's concept of what the right ear of Voltaire from the bust by Houdon would have looked like if it had not been obscured by hair.
I decided to carry on by searching for other images of Voltaire, hoping to find another right ear to compare with the one drawn by Cézanne, and the one in my painting. I found that many of the statues, paintings, etc. of Voltaire were modeled with a wig, in which cases the ears were not visible. Other works were portrayed without the wig but did not feature profile photos which showed the ears clearly.
Just when I thought I had found every possible image of Voltaire, I found yet another, a marble statue by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle now on display in the Louvre . The Louvre website featured a photo of Voltaire's right profile from the statue, and it became immediately apparent that this statue of Voltaire by Pigalle had been the source of the rare solitary right ear drawn by Paul Cézanne.
From the time Cézanne first came to Paris, Pigalle's statue of Voltaire would have been at the Institut de France, a short distance from the Académie Suisse. I am convinced Cézanne had gone out of his way to acquire the unobscured right ear of Voltaire by the early 1870's and that this ear then became the long version of Cézanne's basic ear forms to be used for the ears of the subjects of his male portraits and his self-portraits beginning in the early 1870s. As regards the subject of The Fisherman, the drawing of this right ear confirms Cézanne's interest in the right profile of Voltaire.
It is worth mentioning again that among Cézanne's drawings, this ear is the first study where he had purposely chosen an ear and drawn it in an uncharacteristically academic manner.
To me, it represented a major turning point for Cézanne's portrait technique directly addressing an aspect of facial compositions which had been problematic for him in his portraits of the 1860's.
What I now believe may have been the first portrait with an ear which was based on the artist's right ear study after Pigalle (in reverse), was the Portrait de Louis-Auguste Cézanne, père de l'artiste, (FWN 430) dated by the various experts from 1870 to 1877.
My ear studies suggest the probability that the artist began this portrait of his father when he was in Aix during the war in 1870, and that the ear was likely added or modified as the artist's ear studies progressed. While I theorize that the artist had also drawn the left ear of Voltaire from the bronze by Houdon, it represented the shorter version of his two basic ear models. Therefore, the ear in the painting of Louis-Auguste would have been a reversed version of Voltaire's right ear after Pigalle.
Another drastic evolutionary change manifested in this portrait of his father is the treatment of the background. I think this monumental background was also added later, and it was only the second instance among his first forty portraits where he has experimented beyond his usual nondescript backgrounds, the first instance was also a portrait of Louis-Auguste (FWN 402). In the following forty portraits only twenty-two featured nondescript backgrounds, this was evolution.
The first, Portrait de l'artiste FWN 434, is said to include a landscape by Armand Guillaumin, View of the Seine, Paris 1871, and is thought to have been painted in Guillaumin's studio at 13, quai d'Anjou, although in 1875 Cézanne had taken a studio next door at 15, quai d'Anjou.
The Voltaire ear studies having been completed, FWN 436, Self-Portrait With a Rose Background introduces the standard ear form that would replace the teacup handle ears of the 1860's.
The Pigalle ear was also apparently utilized by the artist over the years for various other male portraits, among them a pair of portraits of his son dated ca 1885 and ca 1890.
There is also the artist's study of a left ear with a partial profile drawn around it. For the most part, Chappuis' notes were again lacking theories relating either to the unusual profile or the ear, which like the solitary right ear study, was nearly unknown among the artist's drawings to that point. Perhaps it was another case of distraction due to having a study for a well-known work on the same page.
Author's notes for Plate 484
"Studies for "Leda and the Swan":
Leda: 1877-82, Head: 1880-82
4 7/8 x 8 5/8 inches--- 12,4 x 21,8 cm. Page XXXVI from sketchbook CP II. Pencil Verso: No. 831 (a) Right, framed with strokes: a study for the painting Venturi No. 550: "Leda and the Swan"....
(b) Left: at right angles: study of a head and ear, the face not drawn; cf. No. 734. It may be remarked that the swan's wing in the canvas Venturi 550 describes a curve similar to that of the head in this drawing.
Again we have a carefully drawn (for Cézanne) study of an ear. Since the only other early ear study by Cézanne was that of Voltaire from the marble statue by Pigalle, my first thought was to compare the drawing with the left profile ear from the bronze bust by Houdon, which I already had a photo of from the Louvre website. When I made the overlay comparison of Cézanne's left ear drawing with the left ear of the bust, I felt that the drawn ear matched up well with the ear of the bust. The problem with the comparison was the strange faceless profile drawn around the ear.
The shading below the ear seemed to describe the corresponding area of the bust, and the darker strokes at the bottom of the thin strip of hair rising diagonally from the ear towards the forehead suggests the corresponding hair of the left temple of the bust. However, the lighter strokes of this strip of hair which rise diagonally towards the top of the head did not match the hair details of the bust, nor did the remaining details of the drawing appear to correspond to the left profile of the bust, especially the back of the neck.
Was the drawing around the ear intended to depict the shape of a man's head? If so, the overlay showed it to be far out of scale with the head details of the left profile of Voltaire's bust. And if I were to resize the ear in an attempt to match the profile details with the head, the ear of the drawing would have then been out of scale.
However, there was something familiar about these features, which became apparent when I compared the drawing with the right profile of the bust.
After flipping the drawing horizontally, I resized and oriented the features of the drawing overlay to match up not with the right profile ear or the head, but instead with the back of the neck and the downward curving semi-circular lines of the prominent vein of the right temple of the bust...the key suddenly seemed to turn in the lock.
The "study of a head and ear, the face not drawn" as described by Chappuis, was more accurately details for a faceless three-quarter profile, and as such the narrow depiction of the back of the neck now made perfect sense, as did the unusual downward curving lines at the top of the drawing which corresponded quite specifically with the vein of the right temple of the bust of Voltaire.
Ever since my first overlay of the right profile of the bust with the subject of my painting, I had been concerned that the fisherman's ear had been painted at less of an angle than the right ear of the bust.
Now, I could see that with all the features of the reversed left three-quarter profile properly aligned with the right profile of the bust, the reversed left ear was also oriented at a less critical angle. I took this as an indication that Cézanne's study of the ear with the attached three-quarter profile was the tool by which he had adjusted the orientation of the ear to suit his needs.
I also noted that the thin strip of hair in the drawing rising diagonally forward matched-up with what appears to be an area of fine hairs rising diagonally at the right temple of the bust, a feature which did not exist on the left profile of the bust. Another notable aspect of the drawing is the space which was formed between the diagonally rising strip of hair and the shading above the ear. (see circled areas below)
In both the right profile of the bust, and the painting, this space is occupied by a prominent shock of hair which stands out from its background. Interestingly, the shading of the head features of the drawing seem to correspond most closely to the shading of the head features of the painting, especially within the circled area.
It is noteworthy that two of Cézanne's paintings from the same era which I believe had been painted with early versions of ears based on his studies after Pigalle and Houdon, also featured the upwards rising diagonal strips of hair, the portrait of Chocquet even featuring a similar associated highlighted shock of hair. A later study of Paul Jr which had a similar face mapping cup drawn on the same page, also seems to display a feature with a marked similarity to the upwards rising strip of hair.
One of the subjects which the artist had revisited throughout his career was his study of the human skull. Indeed, the head of the fisherman painted from the bronze bust of Voltaire dated the year he died evokes the features of a skull. The fisherman's forehead and cheekbones are not only painted with the tones of a skull in bright sunlight, but the shadows of his right cheek and throat suggest the reflection of ambient light on bronze.
The clarification that Cézanne's faceless left profile ear had been specifically drawn with three-quarter profile details, reminded me of another detailed drawing of a three-quarter profile by the artist, which appears to have been his earliest study of a skull, dated by Chappuis at c. 1868 (125b).
I remembered having studied this skull before, because it shared the same pose as Cézanne's Portrait d'Émile Zola, dated 1862–64 (FWN 394), the earliest of the artist's three-quarter profile portraits where the opposing eye is just barely visible, a pose the artist would use again in his self-portrait dating to 1865 (FWN 397TA).
The skull study appears to be related to FWN 360, the c.1866-67 painting of L'Oncle Dominique en Casquette in the three-quarter pose which was almost a mirror image of the subject's pose in my painting. By the same token, the details of the skull were a mirrored image of the details of the right profile temple of both the bust of Voltaire and the subject of The Fisherman.
What I now found interesting was that the skull, which I believe to have been drawn with details from Houdon's bust of Voltaire, seemed to include the necessary facial details to complete the faceless left profile ear study (FWN 3008-36b). What was even more interesting was that when reversed and overlaid with the photos of the painting and the bust, it very neatly fit the details of both images.
Cézanne's two ear studies, which appear to be from a pair of sculptures of Voltaire, may be the artist's earliest studies of ears. What makes them remarkable is that studies featuring ears were nearly nonexistent among Cézanne's early drawings.
In fact, in most of the artist's drawings prior to the 1870s, the space where an ear should be was either left blank, or covered with hair. Where ears were drawn, they were usually only a quasi-ear shaped scribble.
I disagree with the late dating of these ear studies by Adrien Chappuis in his catalogue raisonné of Cézanne's drawings. However, Chappuis states in his introduction that many dates were assigned based only on educated guesses. While neither ear study had been identified by Chappuis as being drawn from sculptures of Voltaire, Chappuis did attribute Cézanne's front facing study of Voltaire to Houdon's bust, even providing a photo of the bust to accompany the entry for the drawing in the description volume of the catalogue.
I believe the dating of ca 1890 for the front-facing study of Voltaire was also inaccurate. Although the drawing was dated a decade after the bust had entered the Louvre collection in 1880, as previously noted, I recently discovered that the undisclosed location where the bust of Voltaire was recovered following the Paris Commune was the Hôtel de Ville.
It is likely that Cézanne would have been drawn to the Hôtel de Ville by virtue of its works by Eugène Delacroix. And, the Hôtel de Ville was just a short distance from the Académie Suisse where the artist studied during the 1860s.
Finding these associated traces of the artist's portrait composition evolution was fascinating, and looking back at his early portraits and figure compositions it was clear why he felt the need to find a better solution. If ears were portrayed in Cézanne's early portraits and figure paintings, they were not much more than a question mark-like shape, reminiscent of a teacup handle. In some cases, they were suggested ear-like smears quickly rendered with a palette knife.
One of the studies which jumped out at me while searching through Cézanne's drawings for early ears was not an ear per se, but it was certainly ear-shaped, and more specifically quite similar to the right profile ear Cézanne had drawn from the marble statue of Voltaire by Pigalle. What I also found thought-provoking was how similar the shape of the cup was to a series of face-mapping studies by Leonardo da Vinci.
It is well known that Cézanne approached nature's nuances by breaking them down to the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone, yet I believe he added to that toolkit shapes which had their own significance to him. The reoccurring shape of a cup and its handle appear to have been a visual aid for composition of the ears and the facial contours of various three-quarter profiles. The artist's studies of the ears of Voltaire seem to have been interchangeable when aligned with the basic ear shape of the cup handle. The shape of the cups, any shading, and the markings all had significance to him for adjusting the values he associated with them.
I believe there is evidence for an early cup theory to be found among Cézanne's early portraits, and I mention again that the artist's drawings from the 1860's very seldom featured clearly defined ears. Yet in Cézanne's early portraits and figure paintings, if there was an ear at all, there was what seems to have been an early basic ear form which was based on the handles of teacups.
Among the artist's drawings there was also a drawing of a cup, the handle of which matches the ear of an early study of his future wife Hortense. Another intriguing drawing features a similar cup to the one based on Voltaire's right ear, which is drawn on the same page as a portrait study of Paul Jr. whose ear appears to be based on that cup's handle.
Hopefully, the following study will help to describe the significance of Cézanne's study of a cup, and how it may have been used to position the right and left profile ears copied by the artist from Pigalle's marble statue of Voltaire, and Houdon's bust respectively.
From my earliest overlay comparisons, there were two features which I could not clearly reconcile between the image of the bust and the subject in the painting, the back of the neck, and the position of the ear. I concluded that the right ear of the bust was irrelevant to the artist's studies, he sought a formula to place ears in a three-quarter right profile, and the left ear study with three-quarter profile details based on the back of the neck and the curvature above the temple provided the basic ear position whether three-quarter left or right profile.
In the painting, the curvature, and even the hair above the back of the neck are identical to what we can see of the bust, therefore I feel that the variance in positioning of those features in the overlay is not an issue, they were *copied by the artist exactly as seen, just not to the scale of this photo.
*I will again mention my recent discoveries regarding Houdon's bust which indicate the likelihood that the head of Voltaire had been painted directly from the bust. The sculptor Adolphe-Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume who had recovered the bust from the ruins of the Hôtel de Ville following the Paris Commune, had his studio in the same building where Cézanne's friend Armand Guillaumin had taken over the studio of Charles Daubigny.
Cézanne not only spent a great deal of time with Guillaumin in Pontoise when they were studying with Pissarro in the early 1870's, when in Paris he was known to visit and work in Guillaumin's studio at 13, quai d'Anjou. And in 1875, the year so many studies came to fruition in his series of self-portraits, he had even taken a studio at 15, quai d'Anjou.
He had studied and thrived with Pissarro in Pontoise since 1872, and Pissarro had insisted on his inclusion in the first exhibition of the Société anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs etc. in 1874, Cézanne's first public exhibition. How highly did Cézanne think of Pissarro by 1874-75?
Enough to paint a tribute to him in the form of Voltaire, after the bust by Houdon, which had just miraculously survived the destruction of the Hôtel de Ville.
Then he doubled down and added the Voltaire/Pissarro figure, the fishermen group, and their boat to Scene Fantastique, including the Manet figure turning his back on the Impressionists.
The studies complete, tributes paid, his self-portraits confidently renewed, Cézanne must have said goodbye to his old friend Voltaire and thanked Guillaumin's neighbor Geoffroy-Dechaume for his kindness, for in 1876 Geoffroy-Dechaume donated the bust to the state, and several years later it was in the Louvre.
The study with the reversed three-quarter faceless profile and skull seemed to reposition both the back of the neck and the right ear to where they match favorably with the corresponding features of the subject in the painting, and Cézanne's cup study, when reversed and overlaid in the same manner seems to clarify both the position of the painted ear, and the contours of the face.
The study begins with the cropped three-quarter right profile from Voltaire's bust, which was sized and oriented for its best fit with the facial features of the painting. The ensuing images of Cézanne's cup study, and his right profile ear after Pigalle, are both sized and positioned for their best match with the ear of the subject in the painting.
Over the bust I first added the image of the cup, and then the image of the right ear after Pigalle. As it becomes visible, the handle of the cup provides a visual cue for the difference in orientation between the ear of the bust and the painted ear. As the right ear appears, the strange, segmented shadows of the interior of the cup handle seem to correspond to the inner ear features of the drawing of the right profile ear after Pigalle.
Keeping in mind that each overlay has been positioned for its best match with the painting, it is important to note how the various lines and contours of the body of the cup, compare with the associated facial features of the bust, many of the lines being tentatively drawn in a manner which suggests possible variations at those points.
The lines of the right side of the cup suggest the bridge of the nose, and where the side of the cup meets its rim, we see how it mimics the wrinkle of Voltaire's brow. The side of the cup also seems to provide the basis of the opposing cheek and eye socket. The lines at the midpoint of the cup begin at the handle and provide a reference point for the inner ear features, then the same line extends across the radius of the cheekbone, and curves upwards describing the contours of the cheek.
At this point, where the horizontal line meets the side of the cup, it seems to describe the lower extent of the eye, while the inward curving side of the cup further describes the position of the eye. The other horizontal lines seemingly correspond to the upper extent of the eye, the eyelashes, and eyebrows, and perhaps even the contours of the temple.
I believe the subject of The Fisherman had been the inspiration for the figure who is highlighted in front of the sail in the artist's 1875 landscape and that my painting may have served as the impetus for the artist to add the fishermen and their boat to what appears to have been a finished painting.
What had originally caused me to focus my attention on this painting was the standing man highlighted in front of the sail. The man's head is presented in a three-quarter profile with the opposing eye just visible, and the shadows and highlights of his face and ear are nearly identical (in reverse) to those of the subject in The Fisherman. Directly below him in the right foreground is what appears to be a round partially glazed jug.
The sail of the boat in Scene Fantastique became the inspiration for me to title my painting The Fisherman, because the sail of that boat perfectly described the unusual background of my painting.
Scene Fantastique is more than an extension of the Voltaire/Pissarro tribute theme from The Fisherman, it is a documentary of the times, and I have done my best to decipher its narratives in a dedicated Scene Fantastique study page.
There was a photo said to be taken in Camille Pissarro's garden which I believe to be directly related to my painting, to Scene Fantastique, and to the artist's self-portraits of the mid-1870's.
The subjects of the photo are thought to have belonged to the small group of artists working alongside Camille Pissarro in the 1870's known as the School of Pontoise.
The insights provided by this photo cannot be understated, it is a roadmap of Cézanne's compositional thought process in the early 1870's.
As it appears to be the source of many aspects of The Fisherman and Scene Fantastique, I have added my research of what turned out to be a series of photos taken in Pissarro's garden in Pontoise to my Scene Fantastique study page.
I offer the suggestion, and a montage showing the similarity between the features of the subject in this study, and the subject of The Fisherman.
Perhaps Cézanne had ultimately blended the "expressive eyes" of this study with the likeness of Voltaire, which I believe he had carefully studied for his own self-portraits, for the portrait of the fisherman in order to imbue Voltaire the philosopher with the sensation he had recorded of the spirit of Camille Pissarro, the artist.
One of the artist's drawings which appears to be related to the man standing next to Pissarro in the garden photo, is his study of a what I believe to have been the man's left hand.
Here we have a left hand which may have been a study for a right. Like Cézanne's early ear studies, this early sketch of a carefully drawn solitary hand was rare. Since Chappuis' comments on the artist's drawings were often quite descriptive, it is surprising that he had not speculated as to why the artist had drawn something which for him was quite extraordinary.
Studying the artist's works through the filter of my painting has made it possible for me to detect certain insights as to how he had often made use of the bits and pieces he had gleaned from life and art which he had recorded within his sketchbooks. Whether he had drawn them from real life, a photo, statue, or painting is often impossible to know.
The Fisherman also features a round partially glazed jug. A similar jug has been on display in Cézanne's studio museum for over a century.
The still life arrangement on the table below was posed and photographed by John Rewald. It must be noted that in the black and white photos of the jug, the glaze of the jug appears black. In a much later color photo of the jug from the book Cézanne and the Provençal Table, the glaze appears to be a caramel color, similar to the coloration at the top of the jug in The Fisherman.
Cezanne The Late Work p. 101
After many years searching through Cézanne's works in available books I was unable to find that half-glazed jug which is on display in his studio in any of his figure paintings or still life compositions. There are drawings and paintings of a similarly shaped stoneware jug in which the artist made various iterations of the circular features of the stoneware jug's overglaze decorations. While I believe that the circular feature on the jug in my painting represents a reflection, the double-circular features are quite similar to overglazed details found on the studies of the stoneware jug.
It should also be noted that the triangular reflection at the top left of the half-glazed jug in The Fisherman features what could be seen as a profile of a woman wearing a scarf similar to the paintings of the artist's sister and mother with scarves over their heads.
While I had seen reproductions of the painting Scene Fantastique in several books, the images were so small that many details were simply impossible to detect. Yet there was one book I found in which the photo had not been printed as darkly, and in the lower right corner which had previously appeared to contain empty shadows, I spotted among the fishermen's equipment on the riverbank, what appeared to be a round glazed jug.
The Metropolitan Museum finally added a large format photo of the painting at their website. Even with the large format photo, the dark shiny round jug barely stands out from the shadows, but it appears as though the glaze at the bottom of the jug has similar curves to the jug in The Fisherman.
I mentioned the triangular area of the upper left of the jug looking like a woman wearing a scarf, but watching this video with it in mind it looks more like the reflection of a woman wearing a shawl, I somehow feel that it is the fisherman's wife.
