The Drinker (Le Buveur)

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

Cézanne painted individual portraits of his employees on his country estate, and the poses captured in these works often relate to his ambitious group of genre paintings. The Drinker is frequently subsumed within the broader Card Players thematic, even though it is more than a preparatory study and is an accomplished portrait in its own right. Each laborer on Cézanne's estate, when chosen to become a model, switched from one form of employment to another. Even when his models are shown posing, Cézanne took pains to emphasize labor versus rest. Here, the subject sits next to a bottle of wine, but there is no glass, leaving him unable to savor the fruits of his labor.

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