In the art museum on the Wellesley College campus, there’s a painting by Paul Cezanne that I’d like to tell you about, titled “Portrait Romantique.” It’s 19 ½ by 17 ½ inches, from early in his career, sometime in 1868-70. Like everything he painted, it rewards careful study, an approach similar to the close reading we bring to literary works.

Entering the gallery, I’m struck from a distance by the black that occupies much of the space, the black of the coat, and the wide wavy black hair at the top that’s connected to the coat by the curve of black beard from the ear to the chin. I notice the formidable black eyebrows, too, especially the upwardly jutting one over the right eye. I’m having these responses while also aware of and somewhat distracted by the elaborate fanciness and size of the gold frame.

Coming closer, concentrating on the painting, marginalizing the frame, I’m drawn to the angles of the nose and sharp lines of the white collar. I see clearly the bright blue and the shaded blue-black of the tie at the center. It presses upward, the chin poised on it, with a slight black edging along the blue and a triangular point that projects into the expanse of white collar.

The black eyes: they’re not gazing at me, but I’m attracted to them. They seem to me a little off, asymmetrical. The effect is disquieting, these eyes that Cezanne has positioned not quite where they should be.

I’m intrigued by the large right ear, nestled, as if seeking refuge, under the sweep of black hair. The hair is like a wave, or a rolling hillside. It’s tightly in place on the right side of the head, but it may be at risk of sliding off on the left.

All the black, by contrast, makes the forehead and face prominent. There are patches of paleness, but then I perceive that this pale color is tinted and hued in areas of red and maybe orange. I take pleasure in the reddish pale bump of the right cheek, probably done with a palette knife. Cezanne’s application of paint is decisive, firm and forceful.

That’s a great nose, straight down most of the way, then a thrust outward toward its bottom. It has a nice reddish tip, with an arc of paleness on the nose’s side, and gradations and tiny lines of red tones mixed with pink and traces of gray. I’m allured, too, by the gray vest between the falling folds of the black coat. I see streaks of gray in the hair, a grayish, not a black, mustache; the same is true of the facial hair under the reddened lower lip.

With each moment, I’m becoming mindful of Cezanne’s hand, the action of the artist, his decision-making. I’m seeing what’s on the canvas and feeling how this portrait was made. I imagine the absence that was there at first, nothing on the whiteness yet, no mark, stroke, or slash, no dashes or swatches or rugged ridges of paint.

Then the bolt of inspiration, and the drama of choice begins. This bold, moody portrait is taking shape, and I witness on the canvas the visual demonstration of the points of view from which Cezanne renders each feature of the face and facet of the hair and clothing.

I’m engaged by this portrait as an object on the wall for response and inspection. It has weight, as if carved and sculptured. I’m recreating how it was done, locating myself on the scene alongside Cezanne when he made it come to life. I sense his struggle and toil, insistence and resolve, and the barely repressed violence, the concentration of energy in this artist’s relation to his materials.

Even as I glimpse details of face and clothing, I’m becoming interested the somber background that’s balanced against the blackness, holding it in, and, simultaneously, moving it outward. There are no hands or arms. The right shoulder: it’s not big. But this shoulder is strong, made more that way because the slant of the left shoulder is reduced, made weaker, through the angled placement of the body.

I’m curious about what I’m seeing, what Cezanne is making me think about—which is about him as well as about the figure he has portrayed. I’m enamored by the gray and black and blue, the flesh tones. But now I have a question, as I ponder the light falling from the left: what is it that these eyes are looking at?

Some scholars contend that this is a portrait of one of Cezanne’s uncles or a hometown friend. But it could be that he used a model, conceiving of it as a character study of the “romantic” temperament: pensive, melancholy, introspective, alienated. It’s possible that the title might not be Cezanne’s, but a later invention by a collector or dealer. Not a specific person, then, but a type.

What might Cezanne have been thinking about this figure he has taken as his subject? I expect interiority in a portrait. But I’m not sure how much there is in this one. It’s powerfully painted, directly what it is, not a window to be looked through to an inside. That’s my impression, but others might come to a different conclusion. For them, there could be evocations of an inner life. What are they seeing and how would they describe it?

This is central to the pleasure of close reading literature and art: it’s an activity that starts with a single reader but that’s ultimately more social than solitary. When I’m on my own, trying to figure out what I think, I’m imagining how my teachers, friends, and students might reply to me. Even better is close reading in the actual company of others, their minds, bodies, points of view, and voices.

That’s why I enjoy being in the classroom amid the interpretive back and forth, why I look forward to showing a poem I’m excited about to a friend, and why I’m eager to walk through a museum with someone who knows more about painting and portraiture than I do. Making discoveries and sharing them: close readers delight in collaboration and community.

Writing this post has made me realize how much close reading matters and how wide its application is. It’s a form of being in the world, an orientation that’s aesthetic and moral, the effort to know and articulate the meaning of all we encounter, what we see and who we’re with.

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he enjoys teaching courses on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other American writers. His recent publications include essays on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway.

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