Paul Cezanne "Still life with drapery"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Painting by Paul Cezanne "Still life with drapery", created in 1892-1894, emphasizes the peculiarities of the author's impressionistic manner. Let's compare this work with a sketch and admire the skill of the artist.

Detailed description of the painting

The work was done in 1892-1894. The painting depicts two plates with oranges and apples placed on two crumpled (most recently) napkins (or tablecloths). The author added a white faience jug painted with flowers to the canvas. It is this jug that appears on many of the artist's still lifes, which is probably why he was written out on the "Still Life with Drapery", as always, with love and care.

The jug, like everything white on the canvas, shines with purity and gives a feeling of coolness (gray-blue shadows and folds of napkins), emphasizing the bright yellow-orange warmth of the fruit and the material of the drapery, which serves as the left background of the picture and is a dense sheer fabric, most likely floral silk.

Dark color is present only on the background only in the most hidden corners of matter on the canvas on the left and incomprehensible background on the right. There is a lot of white, but it collects warm fruityshades and carries a feeling not only of purity and light, but of summer and the joy of being. The author writes fruits with obvious pleasure: yellowish shades of green apples complement and soften the orangeness of oranges.

Features of the canvas and style of the author

Despite the lively tenderness, the fruits in the “Still Life with Drapery”, as always with Cezanne, are very tangible, have weight and density. The jug also stands firmly on the table, in contrast to the plates, which, like the right background, are designed to lead the viewer away from reality and be perplexed. Is the right edge of the table raised or not? Will the plates roll down on the viewer with such an inclination or not? Is there anything in the heavy-looking jug?

Art historian A. Dubeshko believes that the author allows a violation in perspective specifically as a sign of rejection of well-known academic still lifes, using a look at still life objects from different angles. Painting specialists note an extraordinary sense of balance of forms and colors in the work, which makes it beautiful, solid and stable in our material world.

Study for the painting and the canvas itself

It is interesting to compare the unfinished study for the painting and the painting itself. On the sketch (kept in the Barnes Foundation Museum, Pennsylvania, USA, dated 1892-1894), Cezanne is completely realistic, sometimes even boring: everything is simple and ordinary, the most interesting thing is the drapery in the background. And in the picture itself, a real holiday: the richness of fruits on plates, flowers in ornaments and light shades - everything is momentary and beautiful. On the canvas there is everything that distinguishes the paintingsImpressionists, whose follower was Paul Cezanne.