The Vase of Tulips
Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906)
c. 1890
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 59.6 × 42.3 cm (23 1/2 × 16 5/8 in.); Framed: 84.5 × 67 × 10.2 cm (33 1/4 × 26 3/8 × 4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The table in this still life of flowers and fruit appears in several of Paul Cezanne’s other paintings, although scholars do not agree about which of the artist’s residences housed this piece of furniture. As is typical of Cezanne’s work, the painting is carefully considered and the composition hard won: the traces of at least three other pieces of fruit (presumably oranges) at lower left and near the vase attest to the artist’s changing opinion as he struggled to make the arrangement work. Even in the final version, there remains a tense spatial relationship between the objects, which seem to float in the picture plane rather than being anchored to the tabletop.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
