Paul Cezanne - Harlequin Button

Harlequin (Arlequin), painted between 1888 and 1890 in oil on canvas by French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne. A tall figure in the familiar diamond-patterned Harlequin costume stands against a restrained interior, creating a strong vertical composition. The sitter is identified in the catalogue raisonné as Cézanne's son Paul, whose youthful figure is given unusual monumentality through the elongated pose and simplified setting. Rather than presenting a lively theatrical character, Cézanne makes the costume and figure feel still, weighty and almost architectural. He explored Harlequin and Pierrot subjects during these years, translating figures from popular theater into rigorous studies of color, pattern and balance. Paul holds the traditional white wooden sword associated with Harlequin, while his face is reduced to an impassive, mask-like expression. This is the largest of Cézanne’s three single-figure Harlequin paintings; he first sketched his son in the costume in Paris in late 1888.