Paul Cezanne “Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants” 1890-4
What the hell! I don’t want to be an art critic. I just want to look at pictures and be happy with them and learn from them. Now, this for me is a damn good picture. Now, this Colonel is a son of a bitch who was willing to pay money to the best portrait painter of his day just to have himself painted. Look at the man’s arrogance and the strength in the neck of the horse and the way the man’s legs hang. He’s so arrogant he can afford to lean against a tree.
—
Ernest Hemingway at the Metropolitan Museum in Lillian Ross’ 1950 Portrait of Hemingway.
Sir Joshua Reynolds’ “Colonel George K. H. Coussmaker, Grenadier Guards,” 1782. Metropolitan Museum.
After we reached the Cézannes and Degas and the other Impressionests, Hemingway became more and more excited, and discoursed on what each artist could do and how and what he had learned from each… Hemingway spent several minutes looking at Cézanne’s “Rocks—Forest of Fontainbleau.” “This is what we try to do in writing, this and this, and the woods, and the ricks we have to climb over,” he said. “Cézanne is my painter, after the early painters. Wonder, wonder painter.
— On Ernest Hemingway at the Metropolitan Museum in Portrait of Hemingwayby Lillian Ross (1950)
