Portrait of Père Paul

Portrait of Père Paul, also called The Chef (Le Père Paul), is an oil-on-canvas portrait by Claude Monet, painted in 1882, of the chef and hotel-keeper Paul Antoine Graff; it hangs in the Upper Belvedere, Vienna (inventory number 540).

Monet arrived at Pourville, a small resort on the Channel coast near Dieppe, on 15 February 1882 and spent the following weeks painting the Normandy coast. He lodged at the Hôtel A la Renommée des Galettes, run by the Alsatian chef Paul Antoine Graff (1823–1893), known locally as Le Père Paul, whose galettes gave the hotel its name. In a letter to Alice Hoschedé written on the day he arrived, Monet praised Graff as an excellent cook and said his room was right on the beach. He also painted Graff's wife, La Mère Paul, now in the Fogg Art Museum, and both portraits are thought to have been made in thanks for the couple's hospitality. They are among the few portraits Monet painted after the death of his first wife, Camille, in 1879.

The canvas, 64.5 by 52.1 cm, shows Graff in his white toque and jacket, head turned towards his right shoulder, the figure dissolving into the light grey-blue ground at the bottom. His furrowed face and bushy black-and-grey beard are built up with vigorous strokes, the ruddy skin set against the cool background. Monet himself called it a curious sketch. The Belvedere notes how, seen close up, the picture is only dabs of pink, blue and green, and the hat, jacket, light and shadow take shape only at the right distance. Some writers have linked its slightly exaggerated features with the caricatures Monet drew as a youth.

Monet gave the portrait to Graff. After Graff's death it passed through Knoedler to Paul Durand-Ruel, who lent it, with its pendant, to the Vienna Secession's 1903 exhibition on the development of Impressionism. It was bought from that show in 1903 for the Moderne Galerie, the forerunner of today's Belvedere.