Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Rippl-Rónai József gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1998/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - SZABADI Judit: A festői személyiség és látásmód megnyilatkozása Rippl-Rónai és Cézanne modelljeiben

male and female models differently, or used them for different purposes. Even if it may be true that the idollike alienation of his wife with her petrified glance also conveys his own loneliness, in his own self-portraits he is shown a highly lively, real, savage and alert person. However bad-tempered, suspicious, or distracted his face may be, it never becomes empty or soulless. As the grooves in his self-portraits are carved by the ebb-andtide of human passions, so are his male portraits animated. Thus, similarly to Rippl's, Cezanne's portraits of artist friends are permeated by fondness, power and a spiritual bearing (Rippl-Rónai: Portrait of Maillol, his picture of the French, painter Pierre Bonnard; Cézanne: Portrait of Gustav Geffroy or Victor Choquet); the puppetlike character with lustreless eyes of Cezanne's female portraits gives way to vigour, an emotional charge or spirituality. In the web and interaction of diverse endeavours in the period, not only the diverging traits became amplified, but in some cases fine coincidences, subtle consonances can be demonstrated. For example, Rippl's, Cezanne's and Whistler's pictures of an identical theme (Woman at the piano or upright piano), or Rippl's and Cezanne's late-age self-portraits. Despite some concordant pictures (Cézanne: Selfportrait in a felt hat, 1894; Self-portrait in a Basque cap, 1900 - Rippl: Self-portrait with a green scarf and pipe, 1920; Last self-portrait, 1927), it appears incontestable that contrary to Cézanne, the man of nature who was almost an outcast of society, Rippl-Rónai was the citoyen artist of his age. Being as such, he had no experience either of loneliness gnawing at Cézanne, or of overpowering doubt, or distraction muddling up all human relations. His pictures sprinkle harmonious beauty all around them, whose aura radiating a permanence cannot be upset for however a tiny second by the Baudelairean "bizarre" - by the startling or the unexpected.