Apples and Oranges

Paul Cézanne's 'Apples and Oranges' (c. 1899) is one of a late series in which the Provençal painter recast the still life as a laboratory for modern form. Heavy fruits spill across a folded white tablecloth, a blue-and-floral pitcher tips forward, and a carpet of ornamental leaves tilts the ground plane so that the whole composition seems to slide toward the viewer. Traditional perspective is abandoned in favour of multiple viewpoints fused into a single field of colour planes — an approach that would be seized on by Picasso and Braque a decade later as they built Cubism. Today it is one of the great late still lifes of the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

Exhibition Venue

Musée de l'Orangerie

Paris, France