It is a homage to a noble devotee, a man of independent conviction. In the portrait of his admirer, C zanne speaks also of himself. The head is seen in a curious perspective, as if through a glass that narrows the face and sharply foreshortens the sides. The features are extremely contracted, and the turn of the eyes, by reducing the force of their axis, also brings out the vertical of the face, which is prolonged further by the angularities of the upper brow and the similar opening of the collar. Compared to the portrait of Boyer, it is an advance in luminosity and freshness of color, like C zanne's new landscapes.
Outdoor tones replace the blacks and neutralized shades of the earlier portrait.
And as in the landscapes, we follow the action of the brush everywhere, spirited and frank and creating a thick fleshy paste of pigment, rich in flicker, direction, and tone. It is all built up without obvious trace of plan or guiding structural lines, as if from the spontaneous play of the brush in direct response to the man. Chocquet was the first collector to recognize the genius of C zanne, around 1875. Critics felt that Chocquet's impassioned support was a sign of insanity. Until the final ten years or so of his life, C zanne was much less critically accepted than Van Gogh , despite the myth that Van Gogh never sold a painting during his lifetime.