Madame Cezanne

There is a great show at the Met of paintings and drawings that Cezanne made of his wife.  
When we think of Cezanne, of course, we don't think of psychologically revealing portraits, and we certainly don't get that with his pictures of his wife.   Someone once said that he was more interested in her dresses than her face.  She was simply a subject for him, like a still life, I think.   The most striking part of the show is the row of four full size paintings he made of her in the same red dress.   (Apparently Cezanne once said, "Only I know how to do reds".)  

Here are they are:

Seeing all of the works together is a strange experience; in fact, her face looks different in every picture, and only in the sketches and drawings do we get a real sense of what she looked like.  We end up knowing very little about her.  

And I couldn't resist the fruit in the next room (detail of a watercolor):