Cabbages and kings

The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919) was Rémy Zocchetto, a 17-year-old apprentice at the Garetta Hotel in Céret in southern France. He is deflated, lopsided, slouch-shouldered, in a chef’s jacket several sizes too big for him. His hat is askew, his body a scramble of egg-white paint.

Soutine painted at least six cooks in their kitchen livery. In their chef’s whites they look like meringues that have not set (‘Pastry Cook of Cagnes’, 1922), îles flottantes that do not float (‘Cook of Cagnes’, c.1924), and, in the case of the ‘Little Pastry Cook’ (c.1921) from the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, a wiggling line of piped crème pâtissière.

‘Little Pastry Cook’ (‘Le petit pâtissier’), c.1921, Chaim Soutine. Image: ©Courtauld Gallery, Portland Art Museum Ella M. Hirsch Fund

Rémy, the first of Soutine’s ‘petits pâtissiers’, sat six times for the artist.