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Still Life with Bread and Eggs

Paul Cézanne, 1865

Paul Cézanne painted Still Life with Bread and Eggs in 1865, when he was 26, and the work is now in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum. It is a modest kitchen-table arrangement and one of the few paintings the artist dated. In 2022 the museum revealed that a portrait lies hidden beneath its surface.

Where to see it

Still Life with Bread and Eggs belongs to the Cincinnati Art Museum, which is also its recorded location. Paintings in permanent collections can be rotated off view, taken into the conservation studio for study or lent to other institutions. Before you plan a trip around this painting, check the Cincinnati Art Museum's official website for its current display status.

What to look for in person

An ordinary meal, carefully arranged

Start by naming what is on the table: a baguette, eggs, red onions, a pewter tankard, a knife and a wine glass, all set on a cloth-covered tabletop. None of these objects is rare or costly. This is everyday food and tableware. Notice how the pale forms of the bread, eggs and cloth sit beside the duller grey of the pewter, and how the clear glass and the hard edge of the knife add yet other surfaces. Take a moment to follow how each object is placed in relation to its neighbours.

A young painter's dated work

Cézanne rarely dated his canvases, and this painting is one of the few exceptions, so its year of 1865 is fixed rather than estimated. He was 26 at the time, at the start of a career that would later change how artists approached still life. That same year, the official Salon rejected the work. In that light, the canvas records an ambitious young painter submitting a deliberately humble subject to the leading exhibition in Paris and being turned away. Look at it as an early step rather than a mature style.

A hidden face, turned sideways

This painting holds something you cannot see with the naked eye. In May 2022, after the exhibition One Each: Still Lifes by Cézanne, Pissarro and Friends was taken down, chief conservator Serena Urry noticed that cracking in the paint was concentrated in two areas. An X-ray then revealed a portrait of a man beneath the still life, rotated 90 degrees from it and shown in three-quarter view. The museum announced the discovery on 15 December 2022. Its curators consider the hidden figure likely to be a self-portrait.

About the painting

Still Life with Bread and Eggs is an oil on canvas measuring 59.1 × 76.2 cm. That is a moderate size, and it rewards stepping close to study how the paint has been laid down. Cézanne made it in 1865, at the age of 26, during the early years of his career. These were years when he was still seeking acceptance from the official art world in Paris.

The Salon was then the main route to public recognition for a French painter, and it rejected this painting in 1865. The canvas carries a date, which is unusual for Cézanne. This gives it value as a fixed reference point among his early works, many of which can only be dated approximately.

The painting came to Cincinnati in 1955, when Mary E. Johnston donated it to the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Its best-known recent chapter began in the conservation studio. In 2022, the museum's chief conservator noticed an unusual pattern of cracking. X-ray examination then revealed a portrait of a man underneath, painted at a right angle to the still life. The museum's curators consider this hidden portrait likely to be a self-portrait, although the sitter's identity has not been confirmed. The museum planned further study, including multispectral imaging and X-ray fluorescence analysis, to learn more about the layers beneath the visible surface.

For visitors, the painting offers two layers of interest. On the surface is a plain meal of bread, eggs and onions. Beneath it is a reminder that a canvas can carry an earlier history of its own.

Key facts

More by Paul Cézanne

• Pont de Maincy — Musée d'Orsay
• Still life with pears

Sources

• Wikidata Q46944411
• Wikipedia (en) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Wikipedia (fr) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org