The Plate of Apples
Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906)
c. 1877
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 45.8 × 54.7 cm (18 1/8 × 21 1/2 in.); Framed: 71.8 × 82.6 × 10.2 cm (28 1/4 × 32 1/2 × 4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Kate L. Brewster
- 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 lozenge-shaped pattern of the wallpaper identifies the setting for this still life as the Paris apartment where Paul Cezanne and his family lived between 1875 and 1879. Here, the artist disrupted expectations for painting at the time by tipping the tabletop and plate forward toward the viewer and constructing a table with edges that don’t quite align. These disorienting details are complemented by the heavy, almost sculptural forms he created by using a pointed tool—possibly the end of his brush handle—to incise contours into semi-dry paint around the plate and some of the apples.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
