Artist | Paul Cézanne (France, 1839 - 1906)

Year | 1899

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

101 x 81 cm

Location

Petit Palais → This work is not currently on display

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard

Painted in 1899, this portrait is part of a project detailed in Ambroise Vollard’s Memories of a Picture Dealer (1937). Cézanne, the first to undertake the task, required the model to remain as motionless as an "apple." Other artists including Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso, Émile Bernard, Jean-Louis Forain, Raoul Dufy, and Georges Rouault also engaged in this exercise. The portraits by Cézanne and Picasso stand out as significant artistic manifestos. Vollard was conscious of working for posterity by associating his effigy with the names of the artists he was helping to make known, aiming to leave behind a lasting artistic legacy. This vision is confirmed by his 1945 bequest to the Petit Palais of numerous paintings, sculptures, ceramics, books, drawings, and prints.