Still life

In his still lifes, Paul Cézanne focused on formal problems of colour and shape. He approached such paintings analytically and experimented with a gradation of hues in order to give the objects volume and three-dimensionality. Compared with impressionist painters, Cézanne emphasized more strongly the composition and geometric construction of his pictures.

Still Life exemplifies this approach. Cézanne composed the fruit on the table by using various hues and bold, directional brushstrokes. The conventional use of light and shade has been rejected, as have the conventional rules for creating the illusion of space. The tabletop’s lines do not lead into the room but give us the impression of seeing the table from above. At the same time, Cézanne uses overlapping and perspective to depict the objects and fruit on the table, so that we nonetheless perceive depth in the painting. Eschewing conventional notions of depth, Cézanne lets each individual object be independent of a unifying central perspective.

Cézanne’s role in developing the field of painting in the first half of the twentieth century can hardly be overstated. Both Matisse and Picasso hailed him as a source of inspiration for their own radical breaks with tradition, and he has subsequently inspired several generations of artists. For his own artistic development, his encounter with the impressionists Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro in Paris in the 1860s and 1870s was of decisive importance.