Young Italian Woman at a Table
1895-1900
Cézanne famously told his models to 'sit like an apple,' and you can see exactly what he meant here. This young woman looks less like a breathing person and more like a solid, geometric structure built from blocks of color. She leans her head on her hand with an expression of profound boredom, perhaps exhausted by the artist's endless tinkering during the late 1890s. The thick, parallel brushstrokes in her yellow shawl and the busy floral tablecloth show his Post-Impressionist shift away from realistic detail toward structural harmony. It’s a fascinating look at how Cézanne treated human figures with the same rigorous, architectural eye he used for his famous fruit bowls.
- Technique
- Oil on canvas
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York