like electrons, and they orbit around a nucleus—a single apple, more ¿ rmly
modeled than the others. Cézanne placed this apple at the precise center of
this monumental but otherwise asymmetrical painting.
Cézanne also plays symmetry against asymmetry in Woman with a Coffee
Pot (c. 1890–1894). To come face to face with this solemn servant, whose
body presses toward the picture plane like some of the late ¿ gures of
Rembrandt, is to feel an immutable physical presence. More than that, she
possesses a somber and indomitable spirit that would be appropriate for an
honored statesman. The housekeeper is placed off center, but her body is
symmetrical; the door behind her has its own symmetry, and the little group
of the coffee pot and cup and saucer with spoon inhabit the right side of the
picture with equal symmetry. The straight side of the coffeepot is marked
with a heavy, dark line, and the cup and saucer hover rather near the table’s
edge, while the spoon emerges from the cup with authority. Note, too, that
the uprightness of these objects is countered elsewhere by a calculated
leaning of otherwise upright objects—the door, the housekeeper. A certain
cushioning of the authoritative composition is provided by the large, vaguely
painted À owers on the wall covering, which seem to À oat quietly toward
the À oor.
Such rigorousness sometimes leads people to overlook the emotional side
of Cézanne, to forget that this artist is also a lyrical painter and a splendid
colorist and that his treatment of people, of the human ¿ gure, can be
sympathetic and empathetic. We see this side of the artist in Portrait of
Madame Cézanne (1890–1892). The artist’s love for his wife is obvious in
the handling of the paint, the slight smudges around her lips, the liquid depth
of her eyes, the inclination of her head. The shadows behind her head seem
both to support and animate it.
Cézanne’s paintings are notoriously dif¿ cult to date, but we can date Lac
d’Annecy (1896) because we know that Cézanne traveled to this location
only once, on vacation. This painting is a luscious blue, deep as a Monet
water painting, but a different sort of blue, one that seems to step out of
Venetian painting. The work is superbly organized, and the activity and the
reÀ ections of light are exciting, but the profound pull of this consoling blue
is its claim to a permanent place in our memory. About a month before his