The Toilette (La Toilette)

The Toilette (1887) at the Barnes Foundation depicts a woman at her toilet—a traditional genre subject—treated by Cézanne with his characteristic structural impassivity. Unlike the sensuous, intimate interpretations of the toilette scene in Degas or Renoir, Cézanne approaches the female figure as a formal problem. By 1887 he was working in considerable isolation in Aix-en-Provence, rarely corresponding with Paris. The Barnes Foundation's holding of this figure subject complements the card players and portrait figures in the collection.

The female figure is described through simplified planar forms—the back's curved planes, the arms' cylindrical volumes—treated with the same structural analysis as geological forms. The setting is loosely indicated; the figure dominates. Warm and cool color alternation models the figure's surface without conventional tonal chiaroscuro.