Musée d’Orsay · 1895
La Femme à la cafetière (Woman with a Coffeepot)
Paul Cézanne
Cézanne paints a woman — likely a household servant rather than a formal sitter — seated bolt upright beside a coffeepot, reducing her entire figure to simplified blocks of color arranged in strict verticals and horizontals, more interested in her shape than her personality.
Why it matters
Cézanne paints a woman — likely a household servant rather than a formal sitter — seated bolt upright beside a coffeepot, reducing her entire figure to simplified blocks of color arranged in strict verticals and horizontals, more interested in her shape than her personality.
Look closer
Notice how the tilted tabletop and the woman's rigid, column-like posture echo each other — Cézanne treats a person with the same geometric structure he gave to apples or bottles, decades before Cubist painters took that idea even further.
Cézanne never identified the sitter by name, and even her exact identity remains uncertain today — unusual for a painting this large and ambitious, where sitters were typically people of some importance to the artist.
Value context
ELYIO places this work in an indicative editorial context of €10–20 million.
The museum work is not for sale. This is ELYIO indicative context—not an appraisal, insurance value or offer.