Apples and Oranges

Cezanne painted this still life of apples and oranges around 1900, in his studio in Aix-en-Provence. He was about 60, and he had been painting still lifes for 30 years. His still lifes are the most influential of his works: they are the paintings that Picasso and Braque studied when they developed Cubism, and they changed the way later artists thought about space and form. Apples and oranges are arranged on a white cloth draped over a wooden table. A blue and white pitcher stands at the right, and a white plate holds a cluster of fruit at the center. The cloth is wrinkled and folded, creating a landscape of its own across the table. The fruit is painted in solid strokes of red, yellow, and orange, each apple and orange a small sphere built in layers of color. The background is a dark curtain at the left and a patterned wall at the right. Cezanne's still lifes are not about the fruit. They are about the act of painting, about how to represent three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. He painted the same objects from slightly different viewpoints, so that the table appears to tilt up toward the viewer and the fruit seems to be seen from above and from the side at the same time. The cloth is not a flat surface but a sculptural form, with its folds and wrinkles built in thick strokes of white and grey. The result is a painting that does not imitate reality but constructs its own version of it. Cezanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839. He moved to Paris in 1861 and exhibited with the Impressionists in the first exhibition in 1874, but his work was different from theirs. He wanted to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, as he put it, like the art of the museums. He returned to Aix in the 1880s and spent the last 20 years of his life painting the landscape around the city, the Mont Sainte-Victoire, and the still lifes that are his most experimental works. Oil on canvas, 74 by 93 centimeters, roughly 29 by 37 inches. Cezanne painted with a slow, deliberate technique, building each form in small, parallel strokes of color. The surface is thick with paint, each stroke visible, each one contributing to the construction of the form. The fruit is not smooth but faceted, with the color changing across each surface. The horizontal format and warm colors make this print work well in a dining room, kitchen, or living room with traditional furniture. The still life subject suits a room with warm-toned walls. A dark wood frame matches the painting's earthy palette. The 12x16 or 16x20 size gives the fruit and the cloth enough detail to appreciate up close. The painting is in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.