Young Man and Skull

A young man sits beside a small table, his head resting against one hand. On the tabletop, a human skull faces into the room from a pile of books. The two heads occupy a single interior, yet neither quite answers the other. Cézanne gives the living face a downward tilt and the skull a pale, forward thrust; a little space between them becomes the painting’s most charged interval.

The Barnes Foundation titles this painting Young Man and Skull and dates it 1896–98. The catalogue lists it as Jeune homme à la tête de mort , FWN 693. ^{[1] [2]}

At about 130 by 97.5 centimetres, the canvas has room for a sustained encounter. Cézanne gives the figure, furniture, drapery and skull a shared space rather than isolating a small emblem. ^[2]

A figure held within an interior

The young man fills the right half of the canvas. His dark jacket forms a nearly continuous mass from shoulder to elbow, while pale trousers turn that mass outward at the knees. He is seated, but the angled forearm lifts the eye back to his face. One hand supports the side of his head; the other closes loosely over his lap. These two hands do different work in the composition. The raised arm makes a triangular shelter around the face, while the lower hand anchors the body to the chair.

Look at how tightly Cézanne packs the left half. The skull sits on books close to the table’s edge. A small pale paper lies nearer the man, on a darker section of tabletop. The table legs and the chair legs descend into the lower part of the canvas, where they compete with the broad pale shapes of his trousers. Nothing here is a neutral accessory. Each object establishes a different route through the picture: skull to face, books to paper, tabletop to resting hand. The eye can make those journeys, although the sitter’s own gaze does not trace any one of them with certainty.

The backdrop complicates the room further. A large patterned cloth hangs behind the young man and occupies much of the upper left; its brown, blue and ochre folds climb over his head. At the far right, a plain cooler wall opens a narrow strip of space. This contrast gives the figure two kinds of setting at once. The drapery crowds his shoulder and the back of his head, while the bare wall lets the outside edge of the dark coat read clearly. The sitter appears enclosed without being flattened into a silhouette.

Nor do the objects settle into one consistent depth. The skull projects beyond the book edges, the table turns sharply toward us, and the young man’s knees advance still farther. The paper seems close enough for him to pick up, but his hand remains at his face. These choices make the room feel both physically specific and carefully arranged. The table is a stage within a stage, while the chair gives the body an everyday weight that a purely allegorical figure might lack.

A title that guides, but does not settle, the reading

Vollard’s stockbooks record both a descriptive title and L’apprenti philosophe (“The Apprentice Philosopher”). The latter appeared at Vollard’s 1910 exhibition; Reber’s German exhibitions used “The Young Philosopher.” MoMA’s 1929 exhibition called it Boy with a Skull . ^[1]

Joachim Gasquet, writing years after the painting was made, called it Jeune homme et la Mort (“Young Man and Death”) and remembered that Cézanne liked the work. He described the model as a farmer’s son. Those are valuable recollections from someone who knew the artist, but they are not a surviving statement by Cézanne about the painting’s meaning. ^[3]

The current catalogue still lists the sitter as unidentified. ^[1]

One later account supplies another possible family connection without naming the boy. A Christie’s catalogue essay reports that Cézanne’s son told John Rewald the woman in Woman with a Coffee Pot was the mother of the adolescent model for Young Man and Skull . That report may help place the sitter among Cézanne’s working household or local models, but it does not establish his name or confirm the farmer’s-son description. ^[4]

Colour makes the encounter visible

Pavel Machotka argued that the work’s apparent philosophical subject can overshadow its colour in monochrome reproduction. Seeing the original, he found the dark blue jacket, mustard tones and warm flesh colours more vivid than the emblematic reading had led him to expect. He also described the many diagonals bound into the vertical and horizontal framework. His account is a reminder that the mortality reading has always had to coexist with the painting’s sensuous, constructed surface. ^[5]

Across the face, the brushwork is especially restless. Short shifts of red, tan and blue define a cheek, brow and temple without closing them in a single smooth outline. The skull, by comparison, is built from rounded light planes and dark openings. It is startling how much both heads depend on similar kinds of painted interruption: eye sockets, cheekbones and edges that emerge through adjacent strokes. The comparison is visual rather than literal. One head belongs to a person holding a pose; the other is an object placed on books.

Skulls, memory and a disputed date

Theodore Reff placed this figure painting beside Cézanne’s later skull still lifes and compared the seated young man, books and skull to a modern Saint Jerome. The comparison opens a historical tradition of contemplation, though this canvas has no saintly attribute that would turn the sitter into Jerome himself. Reff also used the painting to connect Cézanne’s figure work with his repeated treatment of skulls as painted objects. ^[6]

The skull can readily suggest mortality, and the books can suggest reflection or study. Yet the painting supplies no inscription, hourglass or action that would tell us exactly what the boy is thinking. He looks downward rather than dramatically confronting the skull. Even the distance between them matters: the skull is close on the table, but it does not touch him. A reading of youthful life placed beside death remains persuasive as an interpretation of the arrangement, not a transcription of Cézanne’s stated intention. ^[6]

The current catalogue gives 1896–98 and records an archival photograph annotated “1897” by Cézanne’s son. Venturi proposed 1894–96, then revised that to 1897–1900; Rivière proposed 1895. A 1925 exhibition even labelled the picture 1890. ^[1]

The Barnes also uses 1896–98. Taken together, these records make that a considered date rather than an exact moment of completion. ^[2]

From dealers to the Barnes Foundation

Paris dealers, Prince de Wagram and Reber preceded Barnes ownership in 1933. Reber lent it to MoMA in 1929; it traveled again in 1993–95. Some transfers remain uncertain. ^[1]

The 1993 tour belonged to an unusual moment in the collection’s history. The National Gallery of Art describes it as the first Barnes loan exhibition, made possible by a court ruling while the original building underwent renovation. Eighty French paintings traveled, with permission to raise funds for improvements to the gallery. Washington’s presentation ran from May to August 1993 before the international itinerary continued. ^[7]