Week 17: Apr. 28, 2024

Man with a Pipe, Paul Cezanne, French, 1890-1892, Oil on canvas

Try, try again…

If you zoom in on the information posted beside the painting you will see that this painting is a ‘figure study’ of one charater that later appears in another painting. Just a practice piece. And yet here he stands, inviting us to wonder where he is, what he is thinking, and in what era he exists.

And, until I looked at the information shared, in my mind, he was outdoors. It was drizzling. He had just stepped outside the café to smoke his pipe. He closed his eyes and listened as the ducks quacked and the children played around the pond in the nearby park.