Milk Can and Apples
(1879 - 1880)
Paul Cézanne
Medium
Oil on canvas
Original Title
Boîte à lait et pommes
Provenance
The William S. Paley Collection
Style
Post-Impressionism
Viewing Notes
Early in his
career, Cézanne focused on violent, dark subjects, but in the 1870s he
turned to landscape and still life, a shift that allowed the radical
innovation of his formal experiments to come to the fore. In Milk Can and Apples,
he divides the canvas horizontally: the cool blues of the cloth,
pitcher, and wallpaper contrast with the yellows, oranges, and reds of
the fruit on the table. The foreshortened baguette parallels the sharp
diagonal formed by the crumpled linen, and the decorative flowers and
fruit on the wallpaper complement the placement of objects on the table.
With this careful composition, Cézanne suggests that the painting is
both a mirror of nature and something which stands apart; as he put it,
"It is understood that the artist places himself in front of nature; he
copies it while interpreting it."
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