Still Life in Watercolors

JHESE DAYS SOMEONE STILL LEAVES APPLES tO TOt On the WindoWSlll OÍ the
studio, as if in double testimony to one of the most permanent features of
Cezanne's still lifes and its impermanence in life. For the apples of Still Life with Blue
Pot, at least, are everywhere throughout Cezanne's work, from simple early pieces
like Still Life with Apples (c. 1877-78; fig. 20)—in which seven apples, one shadow,
and nothing else make up the painting—to the late Still Life with Apples and Oranges
(c. 1895-1900; fig. 21)—in which an array of apples and oranges, not so easily distinguishable
from one another but adding up to approximately twenty pieces of fruit
in all, is contained by and arranged around a familiar plate, compotier, and flowered,
generously curved pitcher. There those apples and oranges spread their twentyfold
abundance across a piece of white linen and a flowered tapestry, possibly two, one of
which might be the same one found in Still Life with Blue Pot. There that tapestry
tops off a drastically tilted surface that seems unequivocally a sofa—witness its
carved lower edge peeking out beneath the expansive white napkin—until one
comes up short against what looks like a makeshift table leg at the right edge of the
picture. There, because of the expansión of the napkin into a waterfall of a tablecloth
and the hazardous tilting of the supporting surface, whatever it is, the fruit gives the
appearance of a baroque spill, in spite of the fact of its precariously stable containment
Figure 20
Paul Cézanne
Still Life with Apples,
€.1877-78
Oil on canvas,
19 x 26.7 cm
(jVz x ioVz in.)
Cambridge,
Fitzwilliam Museum
5l
THE LANDSCAPE OF STILL LIFE