Gustave Boyer in a Straw Hat by Cezanne in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2011

Gustave Boyer (b. 1840) in a Straw Hat

Artist: Paul Cézanne (French, Aix-en-Provence 1839–1906 Aix-en-Provence)

Date: 1870–71

Medium: Oil on paper, laid down on canvas

Dimensions: 21 5/8 x 15 1/4 in. (54.9 x 38.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Accession Number: 29.100.65

Gallery Label:

Early twentieth-century scholars identified this man with mutton-chop sideburns as Cézanne himself, but he is actually the artist’s boyhood friend Gustave Boyer, a lawyer who sat for two other portraits around 1870–71. The painterly surface of this canvas, the liberal use of black and gray, and the boldly realized forms are typical of Cézanne’s work at the time.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/435873