Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait (1885) at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh is one of the twenty-odd self-portraits Cézanne made across his career, treating himself as an available subject who could be scrutinized as rigorously as a still life or landscape. By 1885 his self-portraits had shed the intense, somewhat melodramatic character of the early examples and adopted the objective structural analysis that characterized all his mature work. The Carnegie's holding is one of the finest American institutional examples of the self-portrait series, showing Cézanne at the height of his powers applying his geometric color-plane method to his own physiognomy.

The bald dome of the skull, the beard, and the deep-set eyes are analyzed through structural color patches rather than conventional modeling. Warm flesh tones alternate with cooler ochre and grey in the shadow planes. The background is painted with equal care to the face—no soft vignetting, every area of the canvas receiving structural attention.