Focus on Portrait of Madame Cézanne with Loosened Hair and analyze the Background.
In most of the other portraits Hortense Fiquet is presented in more formal attire that perhaps reflects the importance she ascribed to fashion; it is said that an appointment with a dressmaker caused her to be late to her husband's deathbed in 1906. Fiquet and Cézanne married on 28 April 1886, though by that time he had said that he no longer had any feelings for Hortense, whom one scholar has described as "a high-maintenance woman". Although he continued to paint his wife until the 1890s, he disinherited her; their only child, Paul (1872—1947) inherited the estate. The settlement that Hortense received from her son was squandered through gambling. After the death of Louis-Auguste Cézanne that same year, Cézanne and his wife separated, and he moved in with his sister and mother,  remarking, "My wife only cares for Switzerland and lemonade". The psychological distance between husband and wife appears to be reflected in the portraits where she gives the impression of self-absorption. The tilt of her head and body in this work, along with the look of submission and the downward-shaped mouth, are all indicative of an inward, self-concerned nature.
Yet, the image is a tender representation of a coyness, shyness and sensitivity which art historian Meyer Schapiro believed to be a projection of Cézanne's own character. One critic wrote that Cézanne painted heads as if they were apples, a tendency very evident here in the blush of her cheek and the oval shape and curves of her face.
Hortense Fiquet Meyer Schapiro