Mme Cezanne at the Met

“For nearly seventeen years, Cézanne would conceal his affair with Hortense from his father…” —Philippe Cézanne

“Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair” (about 1877) by Paul Cézanne, oil on canvas; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

As I studied the sketches and paintings in the Madame Cézanne exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was compelled to ask the sullen woman peering back at me, “What would it mean to live with you hovering above a console table? How would it feel to find you lurking i...