GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Linked to their fascination with light and study of color, watercolor was an important medium for all the impressionist artists, but it was fundamental to the work of Paul Cézanne. Translucent slabs of pure color are juxtaposed with untouched passages of white paper, which is integrated as a powerful positive element of the composition. Light, fragmentary brushstrokes infuse the painting with a spontaneous, air-filled quality. The watercolor is animated by the floral pattern decorating the white pitcher, the fluted edge of the vessel's mouth and curvilinear handle, and the full, rounded forms of the ginger pot and fruit. The fruit has a solidity and density that goes beyond realism and is typical of the artist's careful contemplation and deliberate rendering of ordinary still-life objects. These fruits contrast with the light-filled, almost insubstantial pale yellow sideboard and the background wall. This watercolor is a magnificent example of the artist's mature work.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Still LIfe with Apples on a Sideboard", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 117.
NOTES
Created 1900-1906
This magnificent late watercolor by Cézanne achieves both monumentality and an almost explosive expressiveness. Familiar objects from the artist's still life repertoire are gathered on a rectangular wooden kitchen table. With the tabletop tipped downward toward us and other forms adjusted in profile for the collapsed perspective of flattened space, we look directly into his poised grouping from the height of the bowl of apples. The top of the wine bottle and side and bottom of the table are cut off by the picture frame, adding to the sense of spatial compression. The arrangement is basically pyramidal and, despite the overlapping of flattened forms, Cézanne's assertive drawing and light/dark modelling preserve a sense of three-dimensionality. Yet, his brilliant colors, the remarkably free and impulsive brushwork resulting even in undisguised drips and splatters, the exploitation of uncovered patches of white paper, and the superimposed washes of varying transparency animate every inch of the composition, opening up all elements to a sense of breathing and pulsating life, and mitigating all traces of the static and permanent. In this close harmony of movement and stability, shapes tend to move in and out of focus, from pure energy and light to something more tangible. The viewer becomes absorbed into the space of teh painting and Cézanne's process of translating perceived reality into spatial notations of line and color. From here to teh further advances of Cubism seems a short step. Never strictly intellectual, Cézanne's late work is marked by an emotional identification of the artist's creative power with the creative forces of nature in general. It has been pointed out that the table in this painting, with its scalloped apron, appears in several late works and is still found in the artist's studio as it exists today at Lauvres. It must be differentiated, however, from a similar table with bowed legs which can be found in his earlier paintings and drawings. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas, TX: 1985), 133.
While the exact dates of the Reves watercolor is problematic, due to the lack of evidence for an internal chronology of Cézanne's late work, it can be placed in the years 1900-06 during his great culminating phase.
1985.R.10- 2012 guide essay page 193:
This still life belongs to Paul Cézanne’s mature period. The same objects appear in six other paintings, most likely made in the little town of Melun, outside Paris, where Cézanne stayed for most of 1879 and into the first months of 1880. He masterfully represented the mix of objects with a restrained harmony in a simple and balanced composition. The subdued orange of the single fruit and the blue enamel of the milk can correspond perfectly with the bluish background. Before entering the Dallas Museum of Art’s Reves Collection in 1985, the painting had belonged first to Marius de Zayas, a dealer who worked closely with Alfred Stieglitz, and then to Lillie P. Bliss, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Excerpt from
Bonnie Pitman, ed., "Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 205.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 131.
The watercolor medium arrived rather late in France. After a glowing history in British 18th- and early 19th-century art, it crossed the Channel in the work of a bilingual English artist, Richard Bonnington, and his friends the French artists Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix. Although the French artists made distinguished contributions to the medium, watercolor did not in fact become central to French painting until the 1870s, when the impressionists practiced it fervently.
The Reves collection is particularly rich in watercolors, but its crown jewel in the medium is this great Cézanne still life. Although one could have a full and complete discussion of the careers of Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Seurat, and Gauguin without ever mentioning watercolor, it would be impossible to do so for Cézanne. The watercolor medium was central to his technique as an artist, and as his career progressed, his oil technique increasingly resembled that of his watercolors. Indeed, his reliance on the primed canvas as a positive element in his late oil paintings would have been inconceivable without a knowledge of watercolor technique.
This late watercolor is among the very finest of Cézanne's career. Along with a small group of equally large and complex sheets scattered in major collections in the United States, Switzerland, France, and Britain, this watercolor is the apogee of his art.
Linked to their fascination with light and study of color, watercolor was an important medium for all the impressionist artists, but it was fundamental to the work of Paul Cézanne. The fluidity and facility of the technique especially inform his late work, such as the large-scale Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard. Translucent slabs of pure color are juxtaposed with untouched passages of white paper, which is integrated as a powerful positive element of the composition. Light, fragmentary brushstrokes infuse the painting with a spontaneous, air-filled quality. With a celebratory, almost baroque splendor, the watercolor is animated by the floral pattern decorating the white pitcher, the fluted edge of the vessel's mouth and curvilinear handle, and the full, rounded forms of the ginger pot and fruit. The yellow and russet fruit has a solidity and density that goes beyond realism and is typical of the artist's careful contemplation and deliberate rendering of ordinary still-life objects. These fruit contrast with the light-filled, almost insubstantial pale yellow sideboard and the background wall. This resolved watercolor is a magnificent example of the artist's mature work.
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Still LIfe with Apples on a Sideboard", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 117.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cezanne, Paul (French, 1839-1906)
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: Aix-en-Provence (inhabited place/France): TGN: 7010786
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
Reves Collection tour stop, a biography of Paul Cézanne
48783769: UMO
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read a biography of Paul Cezanne from the Met.
- Khan Academy~Read an introduction to the work of Cezanne.
- Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris~View more paintings by Cezanne.
- Khan Academy~Watch a short video to learn more about Cezanne still lifes.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Watch this presentation title Paul Cezanne, "Father to Us All" from the Post-Impressionist Series at the Met.
- NPR~Learn more about the still lifes of Cezanne from National Public Radio.
- YouTube~Watch an interview with Alex Danchev, author of Cezanne: A Life, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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General Description
Linked to their fascination with light and study of color, watercolor was an important medium for all the impressionist artists, but it was fundamental to the work of Paul Cézanne. Translucent slabs of pure color are juxtaposed with untouched passages of white paper, which is integrated as a powerful positive element of the composition. Light, fragmentary brushstrokes infuse the painting with a spontaneous, air-filled quality. The watercolor is animated by the floral pattern decorating the white pitcher, the fluted edge of the vessel's mouth and curvilinear handle, and the full, rounded forms of the ginger pot and fruit. The fruit has a solidity and density that goes beyond realism and is typical of the artist's careful contemplation and deliberate rendering of ordinary still-life objects. These fruits contrast with the light-filled, almost insubstantial pale yellow sideboard and the background wall. This watercolor is a magnificent example of the artist's mature work.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Still LIfe with Apples on a Sideboard", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 117.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read a biography of Paul Cezanne from the Met.
- Khan Academy~Read an introduction to the work of Cezanne.
- Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris~View more paintings by Cezanne.
- Khan Academy~Watch a short video to learn more about Cezanne still lifes.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Watch this presentation title Paul Cezanne, "Father to Us All" from the Post-Impressionist Series at the Met.
- NPR~Learn more about the still lifes of Cezanne from National Public Radio.
- YouTube~Watch an interview with Alex Danchev, author of Cezanne: A Life, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Notes
Created 1900-1906
This magnificent late watercolor by Cézanne achieves both monumentality and an almost explosive expressiveness. Familiar objects from the artist's still life repertoire are gathered on a rectangular wooden kitchen table. With the tabletop tipped downward toward us and other forms adjusted in profile for the collapsed perspective of flattened space, we look directly into his poised grouping from the height of the bowl of apples. The top of the wine bottle and side and bottom of the table are cut off by the picture frame, adding to the sense of spatial compression. The arrangement is basically pyramidal and, despite the overlapping of flattened forms, Cézanne's assertive drawing and light/dark modelling preserve a sense of three-dimensionality. Yet, his brilliant colors, the remarkably free and impulsive brushwork resulting even in undisguised drips and splatters, the exploitation of uncovered patches of white paper, and the superimposed washes of varying transparency animate every inch of the composition, opening up all elements to a sense of breathing and pulsating life, and mitigating all traces of the static and permanent. In this close harmony of movement and stability, shapes tend to move in and out of focus, from pure energy and light to something more tangible. The viewer becomes absorbed into the space of teh painting and Cézanne's process of translating perceived reality into spatial notations of line and color. From here to teh further advances of Cubism seems a short step. Never strictly intellectual, Cézanne's late work is marked by an emotional identification of the artist's creative power with the creative forces of nature in general. It has been pointed out that the table in this painting, with its scalloped apron, appears in several late works and is still found in the artist's studio as it exists today at Lauvres. It must be differentiated, however, from a similar table with bowed legs which can be found in his earlier paintings and drawings. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas, TX: 1985), 133.
While the exact dates of the Reves watercolor is problematic, due to the lack of evidence for an internal chronology of Cézanne's late work, it can be placed in the years 1900-06 during his great culminating phase.
1985.R.10- 2012 guide essay page 193:
This still life belongs to Paul Cézanne’s mature period. The same objects appear in six other paintings, most likely made in the little town of Melun, outside Paris, where Cézanne stayed for most of 1879 and into the first months of 1880. He masterfully represented the mix of objects with a restrained harmony in a simple and balanced composition. The subdued orange of the single fruit and the blue enamel of the milk can correspond perfectly with the bluish background. Before entering the Dallas Museum of Art’s Reves Collection in 1985, the painting had belonged first to Marius de Zayas, a dealer who worked closely with Alfred Stieglitz, and then to Lillie P. Bliss, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Excerpt from
Bonnie Pitman, ed., "Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 205.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 131.
The watercolor medium arrived rather late in France. After a glowing history in British 18th- and early 19th-century art, it crossed the Channel in the work of a bilingual English artist, Richard Bonnington, and his friends the French artists Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix. Although the French artists made distinguished contributions to the medium, watercolor did not in fact become central to French painting until the 1870s, when the impressionists practiced it fervently.
The Reves collection is particularly rich in watercolors, but its crown jewel in the medium is this great Cézanne still life. Although one could have a full and complete discussion of the careers of Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Seurat, and Gauguin without ever mentioning watercolor, it would be impossible to do so for Cézanne. The watercolor medium was central to his technique as an artist, and as his career progressed, his oil technique increasingly resembled that of his watercolors. Indeed, his reliance on the primed canvas as a positive element in his late oil paintings would have been inconceivable without a knowledge of watercolor technique.
This late watercolor is among the very finest of Cézanne's career. Along with a small group of equally large and complex sheets scattered in major collections in the United States, Switzerland, France, and Britain, this watercolor is the apogee of his art.
Linked to their fascination with light and study of color, watercolor was an important medium for all the impressionist artists, but it was fundamental to the work of Paul Cézanne. The fluidity and facility of the technique especially inform his late work, such as the large-scale Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard. Translucent slabs of pure color are juxtaposed with untouched passages of white paper, which is integrated as a powerful positive element of the composition. Light, fragmentary brushstrokes infuse the painting with a spontaneous, air-filled quality. With a celebratory, almost baroque splendor, the watercolor is animated by the floral pattern decorating the white pitcher, the fluted edge of the vessel's mouth and curvilinear handle, and the full, rounded forms of the ginger pot and fruit. The yellow and russet fruit has a solidity and density that goes beyond realism and is typical of the artist's careful contemplation and deliberate rendering of ordinary still-life objects. These fruit contrast with the light-filled, almost insubstantial pale yellow sideboard and the background wall. This resolved watercolor is a magnificent example of the artist's mature work.
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Still LIfe with Apples on a Sideboard", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 117.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cezanne, Paul (French, 1839-1906)
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: Aix-en-Provence (inhabited place/France): TGN: 7010786
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
Reves Collection tour stop, a biography of Paul Cézanne
48783769: UMO
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
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