Skip to Content

The Basket of Apples

Painting of a basket of green and red-yellow apples spilling over into a white cloth placed on a wooden table, with a dark green bottle and a plate of pale biscuits behind.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

Image actions

  • Painting of a basket of green and red-yellow apples spilling over into a white cloth placed on a wooden table, with a dark green bottle and a plate of pale biscuits behind.

Date:

c. 1893

Artist:

Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906)

About this artwork

Art, Paul Cézanne once claimed, is “a harmony running parallel to nature,” not an imitation of nature. In his quest for underlying structure and composition, he recognized that the artist is not bound to represent real objects in real space. Thus, The Basket of Apples contains one of his signature tilted tables, an impossible rectangle with no right angles. On it, a basket of apples pitches forward from a slablike base, seemingly balanced by the bottle and the tablecloth’s thick, sculptural folds. The heavy modeling, solid brushstrokes, and glowing colors give the composition a density and dynamism that a more realistic still life could never possess. This painting, one of Cézanne’s rare signed works, was part of an important exhibition urged on the artist by the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1895. Since Cézanne had spent the majority of his career painting in isolation in his native Provence, this was the first opportunity in nearly twenty years for the public to see the work of the artist who is now hailed as the father of modern painting.

Status

On View, Gallery 248

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Paul Cezanne

Title

The Basket of Apples

Place

France (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1887–1900

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Inscribed at lower left: P. Cézanne

Dimensions

65 × 80 cm (25 7/16 × 31 1/2 in.); Framed: 88 × 104.2 × 9.6 cm (34 5/8 × 41 × 3 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection

Reference Number

1926.252

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/111436/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share