John Elderfield considers the true meaning of Cézanne's interest in the painting Self Portrait or Portrait of Chardin Wearing an Eyeshade, 1775 by Jean-Siméon Chardin.

Elderfield writes: "we cannot dismiss the possibility that the unclear sentence in Cézanne’s unquestionably authentic letter on Chardin’s self-portrait is not, in fact, about a physical attribute of the pastel: the plane of light that carries across the bridge of the nose and allows the work’s range of tonal values better to be seen. It could well be about the practical purpose of the shade-creating visor depicted in the pastel…"