Self-Portrait with a Hat

About 30 self-portraits by Cézanne are known. To Cézanne, who required months and sometimes years to complete one painting, the self-portrait was one of a small number of genres in which his working style did not cause problems with respect to his model. His head, torso, arms: he rendered them with a solidity that calls to mind geometric forms. Even a natural landscape changes if studied for too long. The light and the weather conditions change; flowers and fruit wither and die. Cézanne was trying to grasp the fundamental forms latent in natural phenomena, as they underwent constant change. This self-portrait is one he showed in his first solo exhibition. Subsequently, in 1920, a Japanese visitor purchased it in Paris; through the Shirakaba-ha or White Birch School, a literary group, it was introduced to the general public in Japan.