The Plate of Apples
c. 1877
Oil on canvas; 45.8 × 54.7 cm (18 1/8 × 21 1/2 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Kate L. Brewster, 1949.512
FWN 740
The Still Life of Apples
Despite being traditionally regarded as the lowliest of genres, still life had particular importance for Cezanne.[1] A still life was a stable, but manipulable, motif that allowed him to investigate how he perceived objects, particularly from close up, and to experiment with using color to model shape. And although apples were a stock-in-trade of still-life painting, they held especial significance for Cezanne—and his contemporaries—because of their symbolic charge, and their corporeal qualities.[2] Even the floral tablecloth seen in The Plate of Apples may have held some meaning for Cezanne, since it recalls the one that he (and Armand Guillaumin) had painted at Dr. Gachet’s house in Auvers some years earlier (see cat. 1). Finally, the wallpaper in The Plate of Apples is not simply a background element of no significance. Rather, it gave Cezanne the opportunity to investigate complex visual effects induced by staring fixedly at the objects in front of it. The wallpaper is also crucial to understanding the chronology of the painting, and its close relatives.1
Rue de l’Ouest
It is widely accepted that Cezanne painted The Plate of Apples—like other works with a diaper-pattern wallpaper of blue lozenges against a dark-yellow background—in or around 1877, in an apartment at 67, rue de l’Ouest in Montparnasse.[3] This small, fifth-floor apartment consisted of a hallway, a kitchen, a living room, and a second room with heating of some sort.[4] Cezanne lived and worked there sporadically from around August 1875 until March 1879.[5] He could come and go as he pleased, as he rented it for the tiny sum of 230 francs a year from a certain Laligand, a wine merchant.[6]2
There is some confusion between the wallpaper in The Plate of Apples and a different, lozenge-patterned wallpaper that decorated another apartment Cezanne later occupied at 32, rue de l’Ouest.[7] (He stayed there from April 1880 until perhaps May 1882.)[8]This wallpaper was composed of dark-red lozenges on a greenish background, each one containing a floral motif. These lozenges were also linked by bands forming diamonds that enclosed another floral motif. This wallpaper can be seen in Fruit, Napkin, and Milk Jug of 1880–81 (fig. 2.1).[9]3
Fig. 2.1
Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906). Fruit, Napkin, and Milk Jug, 1880–81 (FWN 795). Oil on canvas; 60 × 73 cm (23 5/8 × 28 11/16 in.). Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, Collection Jean Walter et Paul Guillaume. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée de l’Orangerie).
The lozenge wallpaper at 67, rue de l’Ouest appears in two portraits of Madame Cezanne, now in Stockholm (Madame Cezanne Sewing, c. 1877; FWN 442) and Boston (fig. 2.2), and four further still lifes: Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 2.3); Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug (c. 1877; FWN 738) in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Compotier and Plate of Biscuits in a private collection in New York (fig. 2.4); and Apples and Biscuits in an Argentine private collection (fig. 2.5).[10]4
Figs. 2.2–2.5
Fig. 2.2
Paul Cezanne. Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair, c. 1877 (FWN 443). Oil on canvas; 72.4 × 55.9 cm (28 1/2 × 22 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Robert Treat Paine, 2nd, 44.776.
Fig. 2.3
Paul Cezanne. Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples, c. 1877 (FWN 737). Oil on canvas; 60.6 × 73.7 cm (23 7/8 × 29 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, 29.100.66.
Fig. 2.4
Paul Cezanne. Compotier and Plate of Biscuits, c. 1877 (FWN 741). Oil on canvas; 53 × 63 cm (20 7/8 × 24 13/16 in.). Private collection, New York.
Fig. 2.5
Paul Cezanne. Apples and Biscuits, c. 1877 (FWN 739). Oil on canvas; 37.5 × 55.2 cm (14 13/16 × 21 11/16 in.). Private collection, Argentina.
The chronology of these works is sometimes based on considerations regarding Cezanne’s “style.”[11] A more empirical analysis demonstrates that the series evinces Cezanne’s departure from the technique he employed in the early 1870s of modeling forms through the use of chiaroscuro, toward one that adopted an “overall” Impressionist brushstroke and use of color.[12] This suggests that The Plate of Apples was painted toward the middle or end of the sequence, in any event after the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum and the private collections. 5
Studies
A date of around 1877 for The Plate of Apples is also indicated by its relationship to a sheet of studies (fig. 2.6) that includes a portrait, three figures, and a still life. The latter shows a bowl (or pie dish), closely similar in shape to the one in the painting, inside which are fewer, larger apples. The shadow cast by the dish (indicated by faint diagonal hatching) falls over a floral motif below it and to its right, just as it does in The Plate of Apples. This motif is also repeated above the dish and evidently belongs to the same tablecloth as the one in the painting. 6
Fig. 2.6
Paul Cezanne. Page of Studies: Still Life with Apples, Portrait of Fernand Navarrete, Bather, and Other Figures, 1875–77 (FWN 2254). Graphite on laid paper (fragment); 30.7 × 26.3 cm (12 1/8 × 10 3/8 in.). Private collection.
Some of the figures represented on the sheet of studies relate to datable paintings. Notably, the figure of the male bather with his hands on his hips is closely similar in pose to the central figure in Bathers at Rest (1876–77; FWN 926), which was exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition that opened on April 4, 1877.[13] In addition, the sheet contains two sketches of a figure in the act of shoveling who reappears on another sheet, to which it was originally attached.[14] All three are studies for the figure in The Seine at the Quai d’Austerlitz (1876–78; FWN 104), which Cezanne made after a painting of 1873–75 by Armand Guillaumin.[15] Cezanne had worked with Guillaumin at his studio at 13, quai d’Anjou as early as 1867,[16] and the two continued to work together until 1877,[17] making a date of between 1875 and 1877 for the still-life drawing probable. 7
Murer
The signature on The Plate of Apples (fig. 2.7) also suggests a date of about 1877. Cezanne rarely signed his works, normally doing so only when he exhibited, sold, or gifted them.[18] He undoubtedly signed The Plate of Apples because it was acquired by the novelist, hotelier, pastry chef, and collector of Impressionist painting, Eugène Meunier (known as Murer).[19] This must have occurred before October 21, 1887, when it was listed as Plat de pommes, nature morte in the article “La collection Murer,” which Cezanne’s friend Paul Alexis published in Le cri du peuple.[20]8
Fig. 2.7
Detail of signature on Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Although it is not known when Murer acquired this work, he wrote to Dr. Paul Gachet on October 22, 1877, to say he had just bought “an extraordinary drawing” by Cezanne, The Abduction from about 1867 (fig. 2.8).[21] The signature on this early work was clearly added some time after its completion, since it resembles the signatures on works of a decade later in Murer’s collection, including The Plate of Apples.[22](In both, the letter “p” has a swash, or loop, while the letter “z” has a descender, or half loop, below.) The signature in The Plate of Apples is equally close to those—also in gray paint—on other Murer paintings, notably Apples and Biscuits (see fig. 2.5).[23] In all these works, moreover, the signatures are fluid and applied lightly over the heavily worked surfaces below, evidently sometime after the paintings were completed.[24] It makes sense, therefore, to think that all the Murer Cezannes were signed at his request as, and when, he acquired them. Cezanne could have done this when he attended the dinners Murer hosted for the Impressionists in the restaurant adjoining his patisserie at 95, boulevard Voltaire, which were at their height in 1877.[25] Cezanne, and Pissarro, also accompanied Murer to soirées hosted by Émile Zola.[26] Accordingly, a date of around 1877 for The Plate of Apples seems assured. 9
Fig. 2.8
Paul Cezanne. The Abduction, c. 1867 (FWN 1815). Pen and black ink, watercolor, on wove paper; 7 × 12.7 cm (2 3/4× 5 in.). The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Gift of Donald Oresman in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Morgan Library and the 50th anniversary of the Association of Fellows, 1999.4.
Murer gave a thinly disguised account of his practice as a collector, and a description of his collection, in his labyrinthine novel Pauline Lavinia, published in May 1887. This describes how “the mighty Cézane [sic] displayed his marvelous apples” in the home of a collector, Armand Multer.[27] How much Murer embellished the facts here is uncertain. What is known is that Pissarro’s nephew Alfred Isaacson wrote to the painter’s son Lucien on September 6, 1884, to tell him that he had enjoyed a stay at the Hôtel du Dauphin et d’Espagne in Rouen, owned by Murer. He also informed his correspondent that in “the breakfast and dining room” of that establishment “the walls are ornamented with Impressionist pictures” including “1 Sezanne [sic].”[28]10
Apples
In a celebrated essay of 1968, the art historian Meyer Schapiro demonstrated that, for Cezanne, apples were not inert but held profound meaning.[29] The artist’s familiarity with their role in Latin poetry as gifts facilitating seduction led him to incorporate them into his arcadian fantasy The Judgement of Paris or The Amorous Shepherd (fig. 2.9).[30](Schapiro cites Propertius in this context, one of whose elegies contains the phrase “ten apples can seduce a girl.”)[31]Apples arguably perform a similar function in the modern setting of Cezanne’s Luncheon on the Grass or Picnic Lunch from around 1870 (fig. 2.10), which relates to a passage in Zola’s novel Madeleine Férat of 1868. In this, Madeleine’s paramour, Guillaume, is enthralled by the way that she “always brought fruit” to such outings, where she “would plunge her lovely teeth into her provisions, and make her lover bite into her peaches and pears.”[32]
11
Fig. 2.9
Paul Cezanne. The Judgement of Paris or The Amorous Shepherd, c. 1880 (FWN 658-TA). Oil on canvas; 50 × 60 cm (19 11/16 × 23 5/8 in.). Location unknown.
Fig. 2.10
Paul Cezanne. Luncheon on the Grass or Picnic Lunch, c. 1870 (FWN 610). Oil on canvas; 60 × 81 cm (23 5/8 × 31 7/8 in.). Private collection, New York.
There is no overt symbolism of this kind in The Plate of Apples, but the fruits here are powerfully corporeal nevertheless.[33]Like bodies, they have a skin and orifices (of sorts); they stand or lean; and they face one another and the spectator.[34] It is no surprise, then, that Cezanne told Joachim Gasquet with respect to his still lifes that he saw the fruits in them as little people: “You have to know how to handle them, how to cajole them, these gentlemen … I’ve given up on flowers. They fade immediately. Fruits are more faithful. They love to have their portraits painted. It’s as if they are asking you to forgive them for discoloring.”[35]12
The Wallpaper Illusion
The wallpaper in The Plate of Apples is almost identical to that in Apples and Biscuits (see fig. 2.5). It is quite different, however, from the wallpaper in the Metropolitan still life (see fig. 2.3), in which there are stepped bands between the lozenges, forming a diamond-shaped diaper pattern. The wallpaper in the still life in the New York private collection (see fig. 2.4), in which the bands are just visible, is intermediate between these. These differences have been explained with the suggestion that Cezanne “underplayed” or simply “eliminated” the diagonals “when they interfered too vigorously with his subjects” in “the foreground.”[36] It has also been claimed that Cezanne pinned up different pieces of patterned paper to the wall as he required, and that he arbitrarily “extracted” his own patterns from “far more complex and fussy designs” in vogue at the time.[37]13
What is incontrovertible is that the diagonal bands in the wallpaper gradually disappear and the blue lozenges become more salient as the series progresses. One explanation for this, which is consistent with Cezanne’s avowed aim of painting what he saw, is that the series manifests his growing interest in what is known as the “wallpaper illusion.”[38] This involves a process known as “stereofusion,” which can occur with a repeated pattern when we superimpose any two of its motifs on the retina by focusing behind or in front of it while keeping the eyes still.[39] When this is done while looking at floral wallpaper, as described by David Brewster in 1844, “the whole papered wall, with all its flowers” is seen as if it were “suspended in the air, at the distance of six inches,” the illusory surface appearing “slightly convex” and the individual motifs assuming “the appearance of a solid flower.”[40] Hermann von Helmholtz summarized this account and others in his Optique physiologique of 1867.[41]14
Similar effects recur in Cezanne’s paintings. Notably, in the seventeen paintings and two watercolors where the background is a floral wallpaper, the leaves spring forward and assume an uncanny solidity.[42] The effect arises in Still Life: Plate of Peaches (fig. 2.11), where a flower of sorts looms out at the left. In the Metropolitan still life, the lozenge wallpaper looks slightly convex. In the other four still lifes made at 67, rue de l’Ouest, and particularly The Plate of Apples, the blue lozenges appear to float off the wall. What confirms that this process is at work in Cezanne’s paintings is the fact that he very carefully and deliberately superimposed two slightly misaligned lozenges in the background of Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair to the right of the sitter (see fig. 2.2). These can only represent two incompletely fused images, and hence they evoke the unfolding of the process of fusion through time. There is little doubt, either, that Cezanne stared fixedly at the wallpapers in his various apartments, as stereofusion requires. As Gasquet recalled, the painter’s eyes “fixated fearsomely on one point” for up to “a quarter of an hour” or even “twenty minutes” when he looked at the motif.[43]15
Fig. 2.11
Paul Cezanne. Still Life: Plate of Peaches, c. 1879–80 (FWN 777). Oil on canvas; 59.7 × 73.3 cm (23 1/2 × 28 7/8 inches.). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978, 78.2514.4.
Close examination of the paint surface of Still Life: Plate of Peaches and an infrared image of the work (fig. 2.12) show conclusively that Cezanne overpainted a leaf motif in the wallpaper above the tablecloth at the left.[44] This implies that he improvised the painting as the wallpaper illusion occurred or faded.[45] If so, it would make sense that the only underdrawing in the painting was made to establish the position of permanent objects like the fruit and (more particularly) the tablecloth.16
Fig. 2.12
Infrared reflectogram of Cezanne’s Still Life: Plate of Peaches (c. 1879–80). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 78.2514.4. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
A similar situation obtains in The Plate of Apples (see Compositional Planning in the Technical Report). Although an infrared image (fig. 2.13) shows three slight pencil lines indicating bands between the lozenges, Cezanne did not follow these guidelines when he carried out the painting. Instead, two diagonal ridges of thick paint leading off from the lozenges at the left and in the center, and another at the right of the picture, may represent vestiges or ghosts of these bands. No underdrawing for the lozenges is visible under infrared light.[46] A transmitted-infrared image (fig. 2.14) shows that Cezanne nonetheless blocked in the left and center lozenges at an early stage, since each is surrounded by an area of thinly painted canvas. Unlike these, however, the indistinct lozenge at the right of the painting was added at a late stage over paint that was already dry. Taken together, these facts imply that Cezanne did not finalize how the lozenge wallpaper would look in advance but extemporized its appearance as it materialized and dematerialized in front of him, just as he did with its floral counterpart.
17
Fig. 2.13
Annotated infrared reflectogram (Goodrich, 1.5–1.7 µm) of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing three slight pencil lines indicating bands between the lozenges that Cezanne did not follow when elaborating the painting. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.14
Transmitted-infrared image of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Paint
As shown in a black-and-white photograph taken in raking light (fig. 2.15), the paint in The Plate of Apples forms an extraordinarily deep and pitted relief. It has been suggested that Cezanne used a palette knife to incise the contours where these are sunken below the upper surface of the paint, and to create areas with a smooth texture.[47] This is not the case (see Application/technique and artist’s revision in the Technical Report), and although he may have scored around the edges of some apples before the painting was completed, the “sunken” edges of objects, such as those of the tablecloth and the plate where they meet the wall behind the pink apple (fig. 2.16), are in fact created by thick accumulations of paint on either side.[48] This mode of applying paint turns the individual apples into shallow concave “saucers,” which can easily be seen in raking light. The opposite pattern is found in the earlier Metropolitan Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples (see fig. 2.3), where the centers of forms are most heavily built up. This results in little “mounds” or “islands” of paint, some—such as the one in the hollow of the cup—about 1 cm high (fig. 2.17).[49]18
Figs. 2.15–2.17
Fig. 2.15
Raking-light image of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.16
Detail taken in overhead light of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing “sunken” contours. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512. Photo: Paul Smith.
Fig. 2.17
Detail taken in overhead light of Cezanne’s Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples (c. 1877) showing mound in the hollow of the cup. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1929, 29.100.66. Photo: Paul Smith.
The significance of this shift is that it speaks to an increasing concern on Cezanne’s part to relate colors not just locally but globally, or across the boundaries of forms. And in the three apples at the center right of the dish (fig. 2.18), there is an embryonic attempt to organize the brushwork into a common rhythmic pattern. The equally luminous colors throughout the whole of The Plate of Apples (readily apparent in the raking-light image) has led it to be compared to an evenly lit “landscape.”[50] Similarly, the grayish shadow on the dish is a lively mixture made of the same vermillion, ultramarine, and chrome yellow used elsewhere in the painting;[51] the dark yellow in the background is also a compound of several pigments. This is made apparent in an infrared false-color image (fig. 2.19), which enhances the presence of pigments that appear similar in color in visible light but are in fact the product of different mixtures.[52] More obviously, the pink of the apple at the left of the dish is repeated in the wall behind it to the right of the blue cross (see fig. 2.16).19
Fig. 2.18
Detail of three apples right of center in Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.19
Infrared false-color image of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Cezanne often marked a contour in blue paint when laying in the painting. According to R. P. Rivière and Jacques Schnerb, however, who visited Cezanne in 1905, the artist considered such “outlines” as “simply a way of taking in the whole of a shape more easily … before modeling it with color.”[53] When successful, therefore, he would replace them with color relationships, as he did in the edges of the green apple to the right of center. (He may have done so, too, in the ravines near the pink apple, although it is difficult to detect any outlines because of their depth.) Where Cezanne could not replace the contour, vestiges of it sometimes remain visible, as in the half-submerged edge of the larger, more prominent apple to the left of the green one. And in the apple below this, Cezanne clearly found it necessary to reinstate the contour line at a late stage, perhaps to define its edge more sharply. 20
Adjustments of this kind are more generally a by-product of Cezanne’s attempt to use color to model forms through what he called “modulation” (see cat. 8 for an in-depth analysis of Cezanne’s use of color). This involved “tuning” colors so that they produced the appearance of depth and solidity through their interrelationships. These relationships took two forms: contrasts, or oppositions of complementaries, such as red and green, as seen in the apples (visible in fig. 2.18), or orange and blue, as seen in the wallpaper (visible in fig. 2.16), and series of closely related colors, like the sequence red-orange-yellow-green-blue that models the apples (visible in fig. 2.18).21
Other color relationships may be the result of reflections that Cezanne observed. Notably, the pale-green apple toward the upper left of the group exchanges reflections with its neighbor to the right, making the edges of both relatively neutral in color (fig. 2.20). But it is more difficult to believe that Cezanne actually saw the green and the pink colors in the wallpaper behind the fruits (just visible in fig. 2.16). Rather, repetition probably functions here as a means of achieving a cohesive harmony capable of seamlessly modeling forms. Other aspects of Cezanne’s color in The Plate of Apples resist analysis. Notably, the shadow at the lower left of the dish, which does not seem to be produced by the same light source as the one at the right, and the incongruous brownish floral pattern to its left, whose color bleeds into the shadow, form an area that is messy when viewed in isolation (fig. 2.21).[54] It is a tribute to Cezanne’s abilities as a colorist, however, that this area sits perfectly in place when seen in the context of the whole painting.22
Fig. 2.20
Detail of reflections cast by apples on one another in Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.21
Detail of the shadow and floral motif at the left under the dish in Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Other aspects of Cezanne’s composition are no less puzzling. In particular, the top right corner of the table seems to be inclined at a sharp angle to the horizontal edge visible at the left of the painting. Many paintings by Cezanne exhibit “broken” or discontinuous edges of this kind, which reflect how they appeared when he stared fixedly at his motif for long periods (see cat. 10).[55] Cezanne’s so-called distortions are not designed, in other words, to create decorative effects so much as to capture the look of things as vision unfolds.
Paul Smith
23
Technical Summary
Cezanne painted The Plate of Apples on a plain-weave no. 10 portrait (figure) standard-size canvas. The warm, off-white ground layer was applied after the canvas was stretched. Sparse underdrawing detected by infrared reflectography (IRR) indicates that Cezanne sketched in some elements of the composition using a dry medium. The paint is applied remarkably thickly over much of the canvas, though in areas of the yellow background and the tablecloth the paint is quite thin, revealing the canvas texture and the ground in places. While some light brush-marks are visible on the surface, the paint appears to have been modified with added medium, resulting in the somewhat smooth and settled appearance of the brushstrokes. Cezanne probably used a pointed implement, such as a brush handle, to incise recessed contours into the semidry paint around some of the apples and the rim of the white plate; this was done at an intermediate stage of the painting process, before he continued to build up the contours of these forms. Cezanne signed the painting in the lower right corner.24
Layered Image Viewer
Fig. 2.22
Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512. Interactive image. Use the icons at lower right and the slide bar to compare conservation images and overlays.
Signature
Signature/Stamp: Signed, lower right corner, in dark-blue paint: P. Cezanne. The painting was dry when the signature was added (figs. 2.23–24).
25
Fig. 2.23
Detail of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the signature. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.24
Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing a detail of the signature. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Structure and Technique
Support
Canvas: Linen (estimated).[56]26
Standard format: The dimensions correspond closely to a no. 10 portrait (figure) standard-size canvas (55 x 46 cm).[57]27
Weave: Plain weave. Average thread count (standard deviation): 12.1V (0.9) × 12.1H (0.3) threads/cm. The horizontal threads were determined to correspond to the warp and the vertical threads to the weft.[58]28
Canvas characteristics: The canvas has a fairly open weave, which is visible at the unprimed edges. There are some anomalies in the weave density and variations in thread thickness. Cusping is present on all four sides.29
Stretching
Current stretching: The current stretching dates to the undocumented aqueous lining carried out before the Art Institute of Chicago acquired the painting in 1949. Metal tacks spaced 2–3 cm apart.30
Original stretching: The cusping pattern indicates that the original tacks were spaced approximately 5–8 cm apart.31
Stretcher/Strainer
Current stretcher: The current stretcher has an aged appearance. It dates to at least the pre-1949 lining and could be original to the painting. It is a four-membered wooden stretcher with butt-ended mortise and tenon joints and eight keys. Stretcher bar width: 5 cm; depth: 2 cm (fig. 2.25). 32
Original stretcher: See above.33
Fig. 2.25
Verso of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Manufacturer’s/supplier’s marks: None observed in current examination or documented in previous examinations.34
Preparatory Layers
Sizing: Not determined (probably glue).[59]35
Ground application/texture: The canvas was primed after it was stretched; the ground is present only on the picture plane, with a slight ridge present intermittently around the edges where the application strokes ended (fig. 2.26). The ground is mostly obscured by the thick paint layers, but where it is exposed, it appears to fill the interstices of the canvas weave. 36
Fig. 2.26
Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing an exposed edge of the off-white ground application. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Color: Warm, off-white (fig. 2.27).
37
Fig. 2.27
Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing an area where the off-white ground is exposed on the surface. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Materials/composition: Analysis indicates that the ground contains mainly lead white with relatively large reddish-brown iron oxide/earth pigments and traces of yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, emerald green,[60] silica, and calcium sulfate (fig. 2.28).[61] Binder: Oil (estimated).38
Fig. 2.28
Photomicrograph of a cross section from Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the ground and blue paint layers. Original magnification: 100x. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Compositional Planning/Underdrawing/Painted Sketch
Extent/character: Infrared reflectography revealed some basic underdrawing in the form of a quick, freehand sketch (fig. 2.29). The underdrawing provides cursory indications of the front edge of the table and some folds in the cloth at left. In the background, three diagonal lines seem to suggest a diamond pattern in the wallpaper. It is unclear whether underdrawing was employed in other areas, such as the apples or the plate, where the paint is very thick and may obscure any underdrawing.
39
Fig. 2.29
Infrared reflectogram (Goodrich, 1.5–1.7 µm) of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the underdrawing. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Medium/technique: Dry medium.40
Revisions: There are no obvious revisions per se, but the painting does not strictly follow the placement of forms laid out in the underdrawing. While the wallpaper’s diamond motif is perhaps suggested in the final painting through the orientation of the brushwork and chromatic shifts, it does not align with the placement of the lines in the underdrawing (fig. 2.30).
41
Fig. 2.30
Infrared-reflectogram (Goodrich, 1.5–1.7 µm) and natural-light details of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the placement of the wallpaper’s diamond pattern in the underdrawing compared to the final painting. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Paint Layer
Application/technique and artist’s revision: Although the overall surface of the painting gives the impression of very thickly applied paint, the density of the brushwork actually varies considerably. In regions of the tablecloth and wallpaper, Cezanne applied the paint relatively thinly, leaving the canvas texture visible and the off-white ground occasionally exposed. By contrast, the apples, plate, and other portions of the tablecloth and wallpaper were very thickly painted. This is highlighted in the X-ray and transmitted-light images (fig. 2.31). The thickest paint application is often found near the edges of forms: Some of the individual apples, for example, actually have a subtly concave surface topography due to Cezanne’s buildup of brushstrokes at the contours (fig. 2.32).
42
Fig. 2.31
X-ray and transmitted-light details of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing areas of thin and thick paint. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.32
Raking-light detail of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the brushwork. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Distinct brushstrokes are evident over most of the paint surface, but it seems that Cezanne manipulated the consistency of his tube paints with additional medium, causing the marks of the brush bristles to settle out before the paint dried. Some relatively smooth areas, such as the dark-yellow paint just right of the middle blue wallpaper motif, could have been applied or smoothed with a painting knife, though the surface appearance seems more likely due to the consistency of the paint. It is hard to tell whether the areas of thickest paint (the apples, the plate, and sections of the wallpaper) are the result of an incremental buildup of multiple layers or whether Cezanne applied the paint to the canvas in very thick layers, working on top of it to adjust local color. A cross-section taken from the “yellow” wallpaper at the left edge of the painting suggests a complex wet-on-wet buildup of several layers of color (figs. 2.33–34).
43
Fig. 2.33
Photomicrograph of a cross section from Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the thick wet-on-wet buildup of paint in the yellow wallpaper. Original magnification: 50x. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.34
Photomicrograph of a cross section under UV illumination from Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the thick wet-on-wet buildup of paint in the yellow wallpaper. Original magnification: 50x. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Cezanne probably used a pointed implement, such as a paintbrush handle or a knife, to incise contours around some of the apples and the rim of the plate. This was likely done at an intermediate painting stage (and not on the final surface) when the paint was starting to set up; the ragged edges of the contours suggest that the implement “tore” through semidry paint rather than gliding smoothly through fresh wet paint (fig. 2.35).[62] Cezanne then continued to build up the painting, working up to and sometimes slightly overlapping the grooved contours. In other areas, though, the recessed contours seem to be solely the result of paint application (i.e., painting up to the edges of forms) rather than any kind of incision or scraping. For instance, on the left side of the painting, the furrow between the wall and the table edge is the result of thick paint applied on either side of the contour; in some places, the paint from the wallpaper actually protrudes over the tablecloth and the fruit dish (fig. 2.36). Cezanne occasionally applied linear strokes of blue paint along the edges of some apples but seems to have relied more on the incised contours to separate and distinguish one fruit from another. Where he did not indicate a clear boundary, such as between the red apple at the front center of the plate and the apples surrounding it, the paint starts to merge into a formless mass (fig. 2.37).44
Fig. 2.35–2.37
Fig. 2.35
Raking-light detail of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing the sunken contours around the edges of the apples. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.36
Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing how thick paint from the yellow wallpaper protrudes over the table in front of it. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Fig. 2.37
Detail of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing a grouping of apples where the contours are not clearly defined. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
There is no evidence that Cezanne made any compositional changes. In fact, the recessed contours around the apples, plate, and blue wallpaper motifs, as well as the areas of thin paint application, indicate that the artist built up the composition essentially as he laid it in. While infrared reflectography revealed that Cezanne made some indications of the linear diamond pattern of the wallpaper in his underdrawing, as discussed above (see Compositional Planning), he seems to have only suggested it in the painting through subtle variations in the surface color and paint thickness (see fig. 2.29). An infrared false-color image of the work shows the complexity of Cezanne’s paint manipulation and layering: To create the apparent “yellow” background of the wallpaper, the artist used mixtures of yellow ochre, chrome yellow, emerald green,[63] ultramarine blue, vermillion, bone black, and lead- and zinc-based whites in varying combinations and proportions (fig. 2.38; see also Palette). Cezanne’s use of equally intense color in the foreground and background, and the absence of strong shadows and highlights, compresses the pictorial space and plays with the viewer’s perception of depth; for example, the bright ultramarine blue lozenges of the wallpaper appear to advance in front of the mottled yellow background. This effect is compounded by the lack of linear perspective: The tabletop and the plate are tipped forward toward the viewer but at slightly different angles, and the disjointed sections of the rim of the plate seem like they could not possibly connect behind the apples. The dark wedge of paint along the right edge of the table is difficult to interpret: Is it meant to represent a shadow cast by the table on the wall, a sliver of the floor, or something else? It does, however, seem to have always been part of the composition and not a late addition or change to the painting.45
Fig. 2.38
Infrared false-color image of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Painting tools: Brushes, including flat ferrule. Probably a rigid tool, such as a wooden brush handle or a knife tip to incise contours around some forms.46
Palette: Analysis indicates the presence of the following pigments: bone black, lead white, zinc white, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, emerald green,[64] green earth, yellow ochre, chrome yellow, iron oxide red, raw sienna, vermillion, red lead, and crimson lake (pale, deep, possibly carmine lake).[65]47
Binding media: Oil (estimated).[66]48
Surface Finish
Varnish layer/media: Synthetic varnish layers were removed in 2021, and the painting was left unvarnished. 49
Conservation History
The painting was lined with an aqueous adhesive prior to its acquisition by the Art Institute in 1949. A customs stamp on the back of the lining canvas supports the assumption that the lining was carried out in Paris.50
A 1949 memo indicates that Leo Marzolo cleaned the painting that year.[67]51
In 1959 Anton Konrad treated cracks with a wax-resin adhesive. He made notes on the efficacy of several solvents in grime-removal tests, but it is unclear whether he actually cleaned the painting.[68]52
In 1966 Alfred Jakstas removed a yellowed natural resin varnish, carried out minimal inpainting, and varnished the painting with alternating spray coats of polyvinyl acetate (PVA) AYAA and methacrylate resin L46.[69]53
In 2021 Kim Muir removed the synthetic varnish layers applied in 1966, and the painting was left unvarnished.[70]54
Condition Summary
The painting is in very good condition overall. The canvas is lined with an aqueous adhesive and stretched taut and in plane. The original tacking edges appear worn but secure, though they are covered with paper tape. Along the foldover edges there are periodic cracks in the paint and short tears in the canvas threads, which may have been caused or exacerbated by shrinkage of the glue from the paper edge strips upon drying. The paint surface has a slightly pressed appearance as a result of the lining. There are some small lumps of dried paint (possibly picked up from the palette) in areas of thick paint application and along the incised contours of the apples and the white plate where a pointed implement was dragged through the semidry paint. There are localized drying and age cracks in the thicker areas of paint; some of these cracks have slightly open apertures and raised edges but are secure. The paint surface shows marks from early handling of the painting when the paint was still soft: a fingerprint on the lower left edge (fig. 2.39), a linear impression near the top edge possibly from an easel cleat, and some small marks made in the soft paint. There are only a few tiny paint losses. An early retouching campaign (presumably executed in oil paint) includes some mismatched paint in the yellow wallpaper background that extends noticeably beyond the losses. Because of the age and painterly quality of the retouching, it cannot be ruled out that Cezanne applied this himself. There is some light abrasion of the paint in the frame rebate area. The painting is currently unvarnished.55
Fig. 2.39
Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s The Plate of Apples (c. 1877) showing a fingerprint made in the soft paint. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.512.
Kim Muir with Giovanni Verri
56
Undated
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 49-512 (fig. 2.40)
92
Fig. 2.40
Number, cat. 2.
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 1949.512 (fig. 2.41)
93
Fig. 2.41
Number, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: typewritten script
Content: ASSIETTE DE FRUITS (fig. 2.42)
94
Fig. 2.42
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: frame
Method: printed label
Content: Arnold Wiggins & Sons / Limited / 4 Bury Street / St James’s / London SW1 / Picture Frame Makers / Carvers and Gilders / [crest] BY APPOINTMENT / TO H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH II / PICTURE FRAME MAKERS / [crest] BY APPOINTMENT / TO H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH / THE QUEEN MOTHER / PICTURE FRAME MAKERS (fig. 2.43)
95
Fig. 2.43
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: frame
Method: printed label with handwritten script
Content: No 291[?] (fig. 2.44)
96
Fig. 2.44
Label, cat. 2.
Pre-1980
Stamp:
Location: lining canvas
Method: ink stamp (round)
Content: [illegible] (fig. 2.45)
97
Fig. 2.45
Stamp, cat. 2.
Stamp:
Location: lining canvas
Method: ink stamp (round)
Content: [illegible] (fig. 2.46)
98
Fig. 2.46
Stamp, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: printed label with typewritten script and green-ink inventory stamp
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / CHICAGO ILLINOIS 60603, U.S.A. / To / French / Cezanne, Paul / The Plate of Apples / Gift of Kate L. Brewster / 1949.512
Stamp: Inventory – 1980 – 1981 (fig. 2.47)
99
Fig. 2.47
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: R9683/1 / [from 1980–81 inventory: of O 11564 / Cezanne] (fig. 2.48)
100
Fig. 2.48
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: printed label
Content: W. S. BUDWORTH & SON / PACKERS & SHIPPERS / 424 WEST 52D ST., NEW YORK, N.Y. (fig. 2.49)
101
Fig. 2.49
Label, cat. 2.
Post-1980
Stamp:
Location: stretcher
Method: green-ink inventory stamp
Content: Inventory – 1980 - 1981 (fig. 2.50)
102
Fig. 2.50
Stamp, cat. 2.
Stamp:
Location: stretcher
Method: green-ink inventory stamp
Content: Inventory – 1980 - 1981 (fig. 2.51)
103
Fig. 2.51
Stamp, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label with typewritten script
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / artist Cezanne, Paul / title Plate of Apples / medium oil on canvas / credit Gift of Kate L. Brewster / acc. # 1949.512 / LZ-341-001 1M 1/90 (Rev. 1/90) (fig. 2.52)
104
Fig. 2.52
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: PIONEERING MODERN PAINTING: CÉZANNE AND PISSARRO / Paul Cézanne The Plate of Apples. c. 1877 / Museum No.: 2005.145 / Lender: The Art Institute of Chicago / The Museum of Modern Art / 11 West 53rd Street, New York, New York 10019 (fig. 2.53)
105
Fig. 2.53
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865 – 1885 / Venue(s): The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Los Angeles County Museum of Art / Musée d’Orsay / Lender: The Art Institute of Chicago / Artist: Paul Cézanne / Title/Date: The Plate of Apples, c. 1874 / Medium: Oil on canvas / Museum No.: 2005.145 / The Museum of Modern Art / 11 West 53rd Street, New York, New York 10019 (fig. 2.54)
106
Fig. 2.54
Label, cat. 2.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: rmn [logo] / Grandpalais / « Cézanne et Paris » au Musée du Luxembourg / Du 10 octobre 2011 au 26 février 2012 / 65 / Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago / Paul Cézanne, Le plat de pommes / Huile sur toile / 1949.512 (fig. 2.55)
107
Fig. 2.55
Label, cat. 2.
- I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Major Research Fellowship, which facilitated much of the research for this essay. On still life, see Lesley Stevenson, “In Search of the Past: The Case of Still Life,” in Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past, ed. Ann Dumas, exh. cat. (Denver Art Museum; Yale University Press, 2007), 183–201; and Stevenson, “Fruits of Illusion,” Oxford Art Journal 16, no. 2 (1993): 83.
- See Meyer Schapiro, “The Apples of Cézanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still-Life,” in Modern Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Braziller, 1978), 1–38; and Benedict Leca, ed., The World Is an Apple: The Still Lifes of Paul Cézanne, exh. cat (Art Gallery of Hamilton; Giles, 2014), 27–88.
- See Lawrence Gowing, “Notes on the Development of Cézanne,” Burlington Magazine 98, no. 639 (June 1956): 188; Robert William Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods and Their Theoretical Background” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1960), 232, 248, 382n25; John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné (Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 1:217; and Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, The Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings of Paul Cezanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, accessed June 1, 2025, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com, no. 740 (hereafter FWN).
For an alternative date, see Alain Mothe, “1878,” in “La vie de Paul Cezanne,” Société Paul Cezanne, July 20, 2016, https://www.societe-cezanne.fr/2016/07/20/1878/. On the date of the series with the same wallpaper, see Lionello Venturi, Cézanne: Son art, son œuvre (Éditions Paul Rosenberg, 1936), 1:112, no. 209; Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 12–13, 38; and Wayne V. Andersen, “Cézanne, Tanguy, Choquet,” Art Bulletin 49, no. 2 (June 1967): 138–39.
- See Rewald, The Paintings, 1:217.
- Cezanne’s address is given as 67, rue de l’Ouest in the statutes of the exhibition society L’Union, dated Aug. 18, 1875 (Alain Mothe, “1875,” in “La vie de Paul Cezanne,” Société Paul Cezanne, July 18, 2016, https://www.societe-cezanne.fr/2016/07/18/1875/); in the catalogue of the Third Impressionist Exhibition (Catalogue de la 3e exposition de peinture [Paris, 1877], 4); and in a letter from Cezanne to Julien Tanguy, Mar. 4, 1878 (Paul Cézanne: Correspondance, ed. John Rewald [Grasset, 1978], 160). He also mentions “rue de l’ouest” in a letter to Émile Zola, Sept. 14, 1878; see Cezanne, Correspondance, 172.
- See Rewald, The Paintings, 1:217. See also Mothe, “1878,” https://www.societe-cezanne.fr/2016/07/20/1878/.
- This second lozenge wallpaper is identified in Venturi, Cézanne, 1:143, no. 143. The two kinds are conflated in Lawrence Gowing, An Exhibition of Paintings by Cezanne, exh. cat. (Royal Scottish Academy, 1954), no. 21; and Gowing, “Notes,” 188. For the distinction between the two wallpapers, see Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 382n35; and Rewald, The Paintings, 1:217. Michael Doran told the present author in the 1980s that he had retrieved a piece of wallpaper from one of the rue de l’Ouest apartments, but its current location is unknown.
- On Cezanne’s occupancy at this address, see his letters of Apr. 1, June 19, July 4, and Oct. 28, 1880, in Cezanne, Correspondance, 191–92, 195; Société des Artistes Français, Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au palais des Champs-Élysées le 1er mai 1882 (Paris, 1882), 46; Georges Rivière, Le maître Paul Cézanne (Floury, 1923), 99; and Pierre Imbourg, “Cézanne et ses logis à Paris,” Beaux-Arts: Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, no. 316 (Jan. 20, 1939): 3.
- The confusion arose partly because Georges Rivière—one of Cezanne’s earliest supporters and the father-in-law of the painter’s son—failed to specify which apartment he was referring to when he stated with regard to this work that “the background of this still life is the paper decorated with lozenges that lined the room in the flat in the rue de l’Ouest.” See Georges Rivière, Cezanne, le peintre solitaire (Floury, 1933), 126: “Une assez grande nature morte (0,60 X 0,73) appartient à la collection Durand-Ruel. L’arrangement du tableau comprend un pot à lait, des pommes, un verre, un couteau, placés sur une huche et du linge blanc. Cette nature morte a pour fond le papier décoré de losanges qui tapissait la pièce du logement de la rue de l’Ouest.”
- This implies that they were all painted between 1875 and 1879. The style of the dress with the “full, ruffle-hemmed skirt” worn by Madame Cezanne in the Boston portrait has also been invoked to date it to 1877. See Anne H. van Buren, “Madame Cezanne’s Fashions and the Dates of Her Portraits,” Art Quarterly 29, no. 2 (1966): 117, 121.
- See Gowing, “Notes,” 188.
- See Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 396n113.
- See also FWN 2020.
- The other page of studies, from 1873–77, is FWN 2253. See Adrien Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne (New York Graphic Society, 1973), 1:121, no. 35, which states that Ratcliffe was the first to notice their relationship in 1956. See also Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 12.
- See also the undated letter from Jacques Blot to the editors, Beaux-arts: Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, no. 182 (June 26, 1936): 2, which states of this painting, “Guillaumin lui-même m’avait dit que Cézanne avait alors copié de ses tableaux des ‘Quais.’” Cited in Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 381n32.
- See Stéphanie Chardeau-Botteri, “Cézanne et Guillaumin,” in Daniel Marchesseau et al., Paul Cézanne: Le chant de la terre (Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 2017), 70.
- See Cezanne to Pissarro, Apr. 1876, in Cezanne, Correspondance, 151: “N’oubliez pas Guillaumin, quand vous le verrez.” See also Guillaumin to Gachet, Sept. 2, 1876, and Feb. 24, 1877, in Paul Gachet, Lettres impressionnistes au Docteur Gachet et à Murer (Grasset, 1957), 70, 73.
- See Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 217–23.
- On Murer, see Jérome Doucet, “Eugène Murer,” Les hommes d’aujourd’hui 9, no. 433 (1890); Jean Vermor, “Fricke chez Alphonse Daudet,” Le progrès, no. 687 (Jan. 1, 1898): 2; Théodore Duret, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes (H. Floury, 1906), 113–16; Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet: Sa vie, son temps, son œuvre (Crès, 1922), 186–87; Adolphe Tabarant, Pissarro (Rieder, 1924), 29, 34, 36–42, 45, 47–48; Gachet, Deux amis des impressionists: Le Docteur Gachet et Murer (Musées Nationaux, 1956), 143–97; Gachet, Lettres impressionnistes, 161–78.
- Paul Alexis [Trublot, pseud.], “A minuit: La collection Murer,” Le cri du peuple, no. 1453 (Oct. 21, 1887): 3. For Murer’s Cezannes, see “Collection: Private Collector, Eugène Murer,” in FWN, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/collections/entry.php?id=68.
- Gachet, Lettres imprėssionnistes, 161.
- See Ratcliffe, “Cezanne’s Working Methods,” 247.
- See Ratcliffe, “Cezanne’s Working Methods,” 247–48.
- Ratcliffe, “Cezanne’s Working Methods,” 248, 249. See Rewald, The Paintings, 1:223, no. 328, which also suggests that Cezanne may have added the signature to The Plate of Apples later (while mentioning that doubts have been cast on its authenticity).
- On the presence of “Césanne” at the boulevard Voltaire, see Doucet, “Eugène Murer,” 4. On Murer’s dinners, see Vermor, “Fricke”; Gachet, Deux amis, 147; Bailey et al., Masterpieces, 34; and Reiley Burt, “Le pâtissier Murer,” 54–55.
- See Georges Lecomte, Guillaumin (Bernheim-Jeune, 1926), 11, cited in Reiley Burt, “Le pâtissier Murer,” 92n4. The signatures on the thirteen oils Cezanne exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition, which were (for the most part) acquired afterward by the customs official Victor Chocquet are also applied over heavily worked surfaces (although Cezanne seems to have signed all these at the same time in red). See Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 246–47, 249. For Chocquet’s Cezannes, see “Exhibition: Group Exhibition, 1877 Paris,” in FWN, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/exhibitions/entry.php?id=32.
- See Eugène Murer, Pauline Lavinia (Paris, 1887), 235–36, for the full passage.
- Alfred Isaacson to Lucien Pissarro, Sept. 6, 1884, unpublished manuscript, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. I am grateful to Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art at the Ashmolean Museum, for guiding me through the Murer correspondence in the Pissarro Archive.
- Schapiro, “Apples.”
- Schapiro, “Apples,” 1–3, 6.
- Schapiro, “Apples,” 2.
- Mary Tompkins Lewis, Cézanne’s Early Imagery (University of California Press, 1989), 100–105, citing Émile Zola, Madeleine Férat (Paris, 1868), 98: “apportait toujours quelques fruits,” “mangeait ses provisions à belles dents, faisant mordre son amant dans ses péches et ses poires.”
- On apples and bodily metaphor, see Paul Smith, Interpreting Cézanne (Tate, 1996), 67–68; Paul Smith, “Wittgenstein, Description, and Adrian Stokes (on Cézanne),” in A Companion to Art Theory, ed. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (Blackwell, 2002), 210; and Bridget Alsdorf, “Interior Landscapes: Metaphor and Meaning in Cézanne’s Late Still Lifes,” Word and Image 26, no. 4 (2010): 314–23.
- See Smith, Interpreting Cézanne, 69.
- Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne (Bernheim-Jeune, 1921), 122.
- Rewald, The Paintings, 1:217.
- Rewald, The Paintings, 1:217, citing a personal communication from Lawrence Gowing.
- On Cezanne’s aim of fidelity to vision, see his statement in Henri-Charles Stock, “Le Salon par Stock,” Stock-Album, no. 3 (1870), “Je peinds comme je vois, comme je sens.”
- See Nicholas Wade, “Descriptions of Visual Phenomena from Aristotle to Wheatstone,” Perception 25, no. 10 (1996): 1165; and S. P. McKee et al., “The Wallpaper Illusion Explained,” Journal of Vision 7, no. 14 (2007): 1–11. See also Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (Penguin, 1999), 224–27.
- David Brewster, “On the Knowledge of Distance Given by Binocular Vision,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 15, no. 4 (1844): 664–65. Brewster emphasized the dependence of the phenomenon on “slight and accidental irregularities in the two figures which are united.” For the view that it will occur when the motifs are identical or free of “disparities,” see Dhanraj Vishwanath, “Visual Information in Surface and Depth Perception: Reconciling Pictures and Reality,” in Perception Beyond Inference: The Information Content of Visual Processes, ed. Lilliana Albertazzi, Gert J. van Tonder, and Dhanraj Vishwanath (MIT Press, 2010), 204.
- See Hermann von Helmholtz, Optique physiologique, trans. Émile Javal and N. Th. Klein (Paris, 1867), 827.
- This wallpaper may have been in the apartment Cezanne occupied in Melun between April 1879 and March 1880, although another room in 67, rue de l’Ouest or 32, rue de l’Ouest has been proposed as its location as well. See Venturi, Cézanne, 1:138, no. 337; Gowing, “Notes,” 188; Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 14, 38, 232, 383n38a, 396n113; Andersen, “Cézanne, Tanguy, Choquet,” 138–39; Rewald, The Paintings, 1:280; and François Chédeville, “Le papier peint à motif de feuilles: Avant, pendant ou après Melun?,” Société Paul Cezanne, Sept. 16, 2016, https://www.societe-cezanne.fr/2016/09/16/le-papier-peint-a-motif-de-feuilles-avant-pendant-ou-apres-melun/.
- Gasquet, Cézanne, 61, 92.
- For an X-ray and an analysis, see Gillian McMillan, “Paul Cézanne, Still Life: Plate of Peaches (Assiette de pêches),” in Thannhauser Collection: French Modernism at the Guggenheim, ed. Megan Fontanella (Guggenheim, 2018), 60–61. I am indebted to David Max Horowitz for supplying the infrared image, and to the Guggenheim Conservation department for producing it. I also thank Julie Barten for answering my questions about the buildup of paint in this work.
- Cezanne must have relied heavily on short-term memory since the effect would have disappeared the moment he turned his attention to the painting.
- This may nevertheless be obscured by the thickness of the paint.
- Richard Brettell, Post-Impressionists (Art institute of Chicago; Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 62.
- On this kind of paint application, see Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 286, 288–90, 411n31.
- Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 286–87.
- See Richard Shiff, “Seeing Cezanne,” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 4 (Summer 1978): 803.
- See Richard Shiff, Cézanne and the End of Impressionism: A Study of the Theory, Technique, and Critical Evaluation of Modern Art (University of Chicago Press, 1984), 208, 301n29, citing a technical analysis performed by Inge Fiedler.
- See Kim Muir et al., “‘A Harmony Parallel to Nature’: Color, Form, and Space in Cezanne’s Watercolors and Oil Paintings,” first published in Cezanne, ed. Achim Borchardt-Hume et al., exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2022), 53.
- R. P. Rivière and Jacques Schnerb, “L’atelier de Cézanne,” La Grande revue 11, no. 24 (Dec. 25, 1907), 811: “traits,” “simplement une manière de reprendre plus facilement l’ensemble d’une forme par le contour avant de la modeler par la couleur.” For a discussion of Cezanne’s use of contour, see Paul Smith, “Cézanne’s Colour Lab: Not-So-Still Life,” in Leca, The World Is an Apple, 123–28.
- I am indebted to Kim Muir for this observation.
- For an analysis of such effects in relation to the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, see Paul Smith, “Cézanne’s ‘Primitive’ Perspective, or The ‘View from Everywhere,’” Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (March 2013): 107.
- The canvas fibers were not analyzed.
- See, for example, the chart of standard sizes available from Bourgeois Aîné in 1888, reproduced in David Bomford et al., Art in the Making: Impressionism, exh. cat. (National Gallery, London; Yale University Press, 1990), 46, fig. 31.
- Thread count and weave information were determined by Thread Count Automation Project software. See Don H. Johnson, “Thread Count Report: Paul Cézanne, The Plate of Apples (1949.512),” Nov. 2019, /files/a59a24c7-1bde-45ad-adae-74d24564b5c3/Cez_1949-512_Plate_tcr_FWN740.pdf.
- Traces of an organic medium layer were observed below the ground layer in a cross-section sample taken from the painting, suggesting the possible presence of a sizing layer; see Kim Muir, “1949-512_Cezanne_Plate_ARP_SEM_202301,” Jan. 31, 2023, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- Though the techniques used to analyze the pigments cannot discriminate between the two types of copper-arsenate pigments available in the nineteenth century—emerald green and Scheele’s green—the former is more likely, since the use of Scheele’s green is rare and emerald green has been confirmed in Cezanne’s paintings at other institutions. See Francesca Rosi et al., “A Non-Invasive XRF Study Supported by Multivariate Statistical Analysis and Reflectance FTIR to Assess the Composition of Modern Painting Materials,” Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 71, no. 5 (2009): 1655–62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.saa.2008.06.011; and Anya Shutova and Barbara Buckley, “Materials and Techniques: A Study of Cézanne’s Paintings in the Barnes Foundation,” in Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation,ed. André Dombrowski, Nancy Ireson, and Sylvie Patry (Rizzoli Electa, 2021), 31–57. However, recent investigations have further highlighted the complexities related to the identification of copper-arsenic compounds. See Leonardo Pantoja Munoz, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Revisiting the Synthesis, Characterisation, Degradation and the Intricate Relationship Between Scheele’s Green and Emerald Green,” Heritage Science 12, no. 94 (2024): https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-024-01192-7.
- The ground composition was analyzed using polarized light microscopy (PLM) and scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX). For more detailed results and conditions used, see Inge Fiedler, microanalysis report, c. 1975; and Muir, “1949-512_Cezanne_Plate_ARP_SEM_202301,” on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- See Elisabeth Reissner, “Significance of Dense Paint Build-Up,” chap. 4.2 in “Technical Study Within Art Historical Scholarship: ‘Meaning in Making’ with Particular Reference to the Works of Paul Cézanne” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, 2015), 232–81, esp. 243: “While a ‘sunken contour, with [the] build-up of the pictorial forms on either side,’ as described by Robert Ratcliffe [‘Cezanne’s Working Methods’] and first identified … c. 1867, is a characteristic of numerous paintings by Cezanne, the degree of the paint build-up in [Still Life with Fruit Dish, Apples and Bread (1879–80; FWN 782)] and the probable use of the end of a brush to scrape into the paint in order to reinstate the contour are less typical.” Charlotte Hale (“A Template for Experimentation: Cézanne’s Process and the Paintings of Hortense Fiquet,” in Dita Amory et al., Madame Cézanne, exh. cat. [Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014], 54) also notes grooved contours in Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair (see fig. 2.2): “At some points Cézanne seems to have reinstated—retooled—the contour by scraping into the buildup with a sharp implement, perhaps the end of a brush.”
- See note 60 above.
- See note 60 above.
- The presence of the pigments was inferred using the following methods: “bone black (PLM), lead white (PLM, SEM/EDX, XRF), zinc white (SEM/EDX, XRF), ultramarine blue (PLM, SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), Prussian blue (PLM, XRF, HSI), emerald green (PLM, SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), green earth (PLM, SEM/EDX), yellow ochre (PLM, SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), chrome yellow (PLM, SEM/EDX, XRF), iron oxide red (SEM/EDX), raw sienna (PLM), vermillion (PLM, SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), red lead (PLM), crimson lake (pale, deep, possibly carmine lake) (PLM). An opaque brown and traces of purple particles and calcium carbonate were also indicated by PLM, and traces of calcium sulfate by SEM/EDX.” Analysis was carried out on selected areas and may not include all pigments present in the painting. See Giovanni Verri, “1949-512_Cezanne_Plate_ARP_HSI_XRF_202510,”; Fiedler, microanalysis report; and Muir, “1949-512_Cezanne_Plate_ARP_SEM_202301,” on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- The binding medium was not analyzed. The estimation of an oil medium is based on visual examination, as well as on knowledge of Cezanne’s technique and published analyses of Cezanne’s paintings in other collections. See, for example, Hale, “A Template,” 55; and Elisabeth Reissner, “Ways of Making: Practice and Innovation in Cézanne’s Paintings in the National Gallery,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 29 (2008): 10.
- See Daniel Catton Richard to J. Francis McCabe, Superintendent of the Buildings, Nov. 3, 1949, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- See notes on back of Anton Konrad, examination report, Mar. 17, 1959, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- Alfred Jakstas, examination and treatment report, July 21, 1966, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- Kim Muir, treatment report, Aug. 30, 2021, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- The painting is mentioned among Murer’s in Alexis, “A minuit.” There is some ambiguity in later accounts of the dispersal of Murer’s collection. See Gachet, Deux amis, 177, for the statement that “six Cezannes” were deposited “chez Vollard” as part of the settlement of Murer’s accounts with his sister, Marie. Vollard actually acquired only two of Murer’s Cezannes directly, and another from his son, none of which was The Plate of Apples; Jayne Warman, email message to author, Oct. 27, 2022. See also Eugène Blot, Histoire d’une collection de tableaux modernes: 50 ans de peinture (de 1882 à 1932) (Édition d’art, 1934), 21, which states: “Chez les Bernheim, je pris un magnifique Sisley à l’Exposition qu’ils firent de la Collection du peintre et du boulanger Murer, qu’ils avaient achetée.” The brothers Bernheim-Jeune in fact acquired only five Murer Cezannes for their own private collection, which were later divided between them in 1930; Jayne Warman, email message to author, Oct. 27, 2022.
- Katalog der Modernen Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser, München (Moderne Galerie Tannhauser, 1916), xxix, pl. 30, as Früchte Stilleben.
- Based on information provided in P. Rosenberg and Co. to W. Brewster, Feb. 25, 1930; copy in curatorial file.
- PC 18965.
- See Rosenberg to Brewster, Feb. 25, 1930 (ph. 2140).
- See Rosenberg to Brewster, Feb. 25, 1930.
Entry by Paul Smith; Technical Report by Kim Muir with Giovanni Verri, “Cat. 2 The Plate of Apples, c. 1877,” in Cezanne Paintings and Watercolors at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Gloria Groom and Kim Muir (Art Institute of Chicago, 2026), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593251/07. © 2026 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
