This week in La Gazette Drouot: Paul Cézanne’s ‘Jeune Paysanne’ from the Former Camille Pissarro Collection: A Historic Provenance

In the rich corpus of portraits left by Paul Cézanne (nearly 200 works), a whole gallery of figures from his inner circle - relatives, friends and servants - comes to life. In the absence of official patrons, these works were dear to the father of modern art.  

Dating around 1877, our portrait is no exception to this rule, as it features a Young Peasant Woman with a white headdress and scarf, whom the artist may have encountered in his father's home at Jas-de-Bouffan. With her head and eyes lowered, is she absorbed in a humble domestic task? Or is she simply posing in the withdrawn, self-absorbed attitude that so fascinated Rainer Maria Rilkein Cézanne's models?
 

Upon closer examination, the depiction of the humble young woman is similar to the many portraits of Hortense Fiquet, the painter's companion, painted during the same period, and in particular to the painting showing Madame Cézanne Sewing (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) in an identical pose, bent over her work. 

These compositions, with their powerful architecture underpinned by an almost abstract use of color, herald the masterpieces of the mature period, such as the iconic Femme à la cafetière (Woman with a Coffeepot ) from 1895 (Musée d'Orsay), which celebrates another of Cézanne's beloved 'invisibles'.