Guillaumin with the Hanged Man

Guillaumin with the Hanged Man, created by Paul Cézanne French, 1839-1906 in 1873, is a significant and early example of the artist's relatively infrequent printmaking practice. Classified as a print, this composition is executed as an etching on cream laid paper. Cézanne’s experiments with etching during the early 1870s allowed him to explore line and density in a manner distinct from his oil studies, providing insight into his formal concerns during a pivotal transitional phase of his career.

The dramatic subject matter reflects the artist’s engagement with intense, narrative themes common in his early oeuvre. The central motif of the hanged man directly relates to the artist's famous contemporaneous oil painting, The Hanged Man (La Pendu). The reference to fellow artist Armand Guillaumin in the title suggests a personal connection or compositional tribute among the Impressionist circle in France at the time. This work employs dense cross-hatching and deep shadow, lending the piece a somber, atmospheric quality that contrasts with the lighter palette he would soon adopt.

Though Cézanne is best known as a master Post-Impressionist painter, the technical skill displayed in this etching underscores his comprehensive mastery of form across media. Such prints reveal the foundational visual vocabulary that would underpin his rigorous structural explorations of nature and still life in subsequent decades. This particular impression of the work is preserved within the distinguished permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. As an important piece from the early modern period, reproductions of these rare prints are often made accessible, allowing scholars worldwide to study the foundational stages of the French master's artistic development through public domain resources.