Young Cezanne

I had no idea how much Rilke was inspired by the work of various painters. He was especially influenced by Cezanne, who was a "tutelary spirit" and loomed as a "Homeric patriarch" according to H. W. Petzet in his Introduction to Letters on Cezanne (transl. 1985, ed. by Clara Rilke). I'm so knocked out by some of the passages I'm reading, now I'm considering renaming my blog "Painting Rilke." Well, we'll see how long my focus and inspiration remains keyed to his works.

Today--Day 3--in honor of Rilke's muse, we have a portrait of Cezanne. As you can see from the image, I used a black & white photo (from Wikipedia) for reference; Cezanne appears to be an intense young man in this photo. I thought, initially, I might try my hand at Cezanne's style as well. It didn't come out that way. Oh well, I like the way it did turn out--perhaps I am finding my way a bit with my own style... which would be good, since that's the point of my painting-a-day challenge. Apologies for the rather awful image quality, I'll try again tomorrow in better light; my digicam wasn't up to the job.

P.S. - I'm enjoying this realization: While I'm inspired by a writer and his words, Rilke in turn was inspired by an artist and his visual output.