Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in a Red Dress

Cézanne painted his wife Hortense Fiquet in this three-quarter, frontal pose near the end of the 1880s, when he had largely withdrawn to Provence and worked on a long series of portraits of her. As he became absorbed in the structural problems of paint, he treated her features with the same constructive regard he gave still life and landscape, slowing the studio sittings until she reportedly remained patient for hours on end. The portrait stands among the most important of more than two dozen he made of her over the decades.