Little is known about Hortense before she met the painter. Her liking for fine clothes suggests that she might have been a model or a dress-maker, and it is said that she chose to keep an appointment with her seamstress in Paris rather than catch the next train to Aix to be with her dying husband. Although she does not seem to have been over-endowed with good qualities, her in-laws did acknowledge that she was even-tempered and possessed unlimited patience. These characteristics explain how she could bear the endless sittings that C┼╜zanne demanded of her without quailing.
Hortense posed for her husband on many occasions. Sitting in a chair, with her hands together and her hair drawn back into a bun, she was resigned to the sessions. Her passivity and patience suited the artist, who required more than a hundred sittings for a portrait. These numerous sittings may explain the vacant look and pursed lips, but they also probably reveal C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs intention of looking beyond the outward appearance and immediate impression in order to portray the timelessness of his model and to paint figures in the same way that he approached still lifes and landscapes.
