Cat. 10 The Basket of Apples, c. 1893

Cezanne Paintings and Watercolors at the Art Institute of Chicago

Left side holds a large brown basket tilted forward, filled with green, yellow, and red apples on a brown tabletop. In the center, a tall dark bottle stands against a blue-gray background, and a white cloth with pale blue and faint red stripes is draped across the table with several apples scattered on it. On the right, a white plate holds tan oblong pieces, with more apples nearby; the bottle is the tallest object, the basket and plate are medium-sized, and the apples are small.

Cat. 10

The Basket of Apples
c. 1893
Oil on canvas; 65 × 80 cm (25 7/16 × 31 1/2 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.252
FWN 860

Technical Report
Provenance
Exhibition History
Selected References
Labels and Inscriptions

The Objects

Most of the objects in The Basket of Apples can be easily identified. The basket is probably wicker, woven densely enough to prevent light from coming through the gaps between the lengths of willow or reed from which it is made. The irregular shape of its upper edge toward the handle indicates that it is made from an organic material that is susceptible to wear. The fruit inside and outside the basket includes several varieties of green and variegated apples, a few oranges, and what could be a pear at the right. The varieties of all three kinds of fruit available to Cezanne at the time of painting are too numerous to make identification feasible.^[1] The bottle is made of dark glass and may have originally contained rum or wine. A closely similar bottle appears alongside other objects in a photograph from the 1930s of Cezanne’s studio at Les Lauves (fig. 10.1), although this may have been brought there from elsewhere. It is uncertain whether this bottle is the same as the one without a label now in the studio.^[2] The biscuits stacked on the plate are ladyfingers or boudoir biscuits, also known as savoiardi.^[3] The cloth is a traditional white cotton tea towel, or torchon, with a pink stripe, a type still found in Aix-en-Provence. 1

From top to bottom: a bare wall in black, white, and gray holds a small framed picture near center, with a large dark patterned cloth draped behind and to the right. On the tabletop, left to right, there is a tall dark bottle with light crisscross bands, a short light bottle with spiral ridges, another tall dark bottle, a round light teapot with a handle and lid, and a smaller light teapot near the edge. Behind the teapots on the far right sits a large cylindrical jar with a reflective light band; the bottles are the tallest items, the teapots are medium-sized, and the short bottle is the smallest. All objects rest on a flat table surface below the picture and cloth. — Fig. 10.1

Objects in Cezanne’s Lauves studio, including a bottle. From John Rewald, “Iconographie de Cézanne,” *L’amour de l’art* 17, no. 5 (May 1936): 188.

The table appears to be plain and rectangular and likely made of local pine, of the kind represented in Still Life with Apples and Pears from about 1891–92 (fig. 10.2). In the background of this painting is the blue skirting surmounted by a red band characteristic of the Cezanne family home, the Jas de Bouffan, or one of its outbuildings.^[4] Given this, and the similarities of the two tables, the bluish area at the bottom of the Chicago painting to the left of the tea towel could be the floor of the Jas where it meets the skirting above it. Another, more complicated possibility is that the area immediately to the left of the tea towel in the Chicago painting is the void created by removing the drawer of the table, if it is of the type Cezanne depicted in paintings such as Still Life with Bottle (fig. 10.3). In this work, moreover, he elided the transition between the table leg and its apron at the right to some extent to create a broad structure between its right edge and the right edge of the drawer, which resembles the wide, continuous, wooden surface beneath the table at the left of The Basket of Apples. 2

Top area shows a blue-gray wall with a lighter horizontal band; the foreground is a light tan tabletop. From left to right: a large yellow-green apple sits beside a white plate holding a pale green apple, with a small green pear in front. At center-right, a white dish holds three medium apples in yellow and red; further right, a larger yellow-red apple and a large yellow fruit rest near the edge. The fruits range from small to large, with the dishes slightly behind the fruit on the tabletop. — Fig. 10.2

Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906). *Still Life with Apples and Pears*, c. 1891–92 (FWN 841). Oil on canvas; 44.8 × 58.7 cm (17 5/8 × 23 1/8 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960, 61.101.3.

Top area is a pale, mottled tan wall. From left to right on a table, a white cloth spreads across the surface and holds several fruits: green and yellow pear-shaped pieces, round orange and red pieces, and dark green leaves gathered around a shallow blue-edged dish. At the far right stands a tall brown-green bottle with light crisscross bands, taller than the fruit, with more green and yellow pieces near the left edge and a single yellow piece at the front right. — Fig. 10.3

Paul Cezanne. *Still Life with Bottle*, c. 1890 (FWN 831). Oil on canvas; 54.2 × 65.7 cm (21 3/8 × 25 7/8 in.). Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan.

It nevertheless remains impossible to correlate the three layers on the left side of the table in the Chicago painting (possibly tabletop, edge, and drawer casing) with the four on the right (possibly tabletop, edge, apron, and drawer casing). Significantly, infrared examination reveals that the underdrawing for this painting included two misaligned horizontals starting from either edge (see Application/technique and artist’s revision in the Technical Report), both of which may have represented the top edge of the table (fig. 10.4). This is difficult to confirm, however, as this area was heavily reworked by the artist at the left, and it is now all but impossible to parse into its components.
3

Top center shows a tall dark bottle, with a round plate holding several stacked rectangular items to its right. On the left, a large tilted basket is filled with many round fruit, and more fruit are scattered across the middle and right of the tabletop. In the foreground, two broad draped cloths spread across the lower half, with several small round fruit resting on and around them; all elements appear in light to dark gray tones. — Fig. 10.4

Infrared reflectogram (Goodrich, 1.5–1.7 µm) of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Distortion

One of the most perceptive critical assessments of Cezanne’s work to be offered during his lifetime is the article “Paul Cézanne” published by Gustave Geffroy in Le journal on March 25, 1894. Here Geffroy wrote:
4

“It is obvious that the painter … has not been able to overcome difficulties, that obstacles to completion [réalisation] are there for all to see. His is somewhat, and without artifice, the touching quest of the Primitive. There is an absence of atmosphere, of the fluidity by which the planes must be spaced out and the distance made visible from further away. Shapes are sometimes distorted, objects become conflated, and proportions are not always established with sufficient rigor… . The background sometimes moves forward, but the tablecloths and napkins are so supple, the whites so nuanced, and the fruit so naive and beautiful.”^[5]5

Geffroy’s remarks must have struck a chord with Cezanne, since he wrote to the critic the day after his article appeared: “Yesterday I read the lengthy study you devoted to highlighting my attempts at painting. I wanted to express my gratitude for the sympathy I found in you.”^[6] The passage above was probably written in response to The Kitchen Table of 1888–90 (fig. 10.5), which Geffroy could have seen at a venue he mentions in his article, the house of Paul Alexis, his colleague at Le journal. (Cezanne had given the painting to Alexis, who was a boyhood friend, in 1891 or 1892 when they were both in Aix.)^[7] However, the fact that The Basket of Apples is signed—which normally indicated that Cezanne exhibited, sold, or gave away a painting—has led to the suggestion that Geffroy may have seen this work at Alexis’s as well.^[8] In any case, Geffroy subsequently made affirmative comments about the paintings Cezanne exhibited at his first one-man show at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in 1895, one of which was certainly The Basket of Apples, by this time in Vollard’s possession.^[9] In his review, in particular, the critic urged the visitor not to “balk at this or that distortion, at this or that lack of perspective or balance” in Cezanne’s paintings.^[10]6

Top area shows a gray-blue background with a dark chair; to the right, a large woven basket holds green, yellow, and red fruit with white cloth tucked among them. Moving to the center-left, a wooden surface sits beside a round vessel with blue bands, scattered pears and apples, and two small white containers, one lidded and one with a handle and pink-and-green flowers. At the bottom, white cloths drape over light brown benches, with more fruit arranged across them, including a large green pear on a small bench at the far right. — Fig. 10.5

Paul Cezanne. *The Kitchen Table*, 1888–90 (FWN 813). Oil on canvas; 65 × 81.5 cm (25 15/16 × 32 1/8 in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 2819.

Geffroy’s observations regarding Cezanne’s distortions are premised on the standard of accuracy set by a photograph, or a painting that reproduces a perspectival view. He was nonetheless correct to identify a number of idiosyncratic features as characteristic of Cezanne’s work, most notably the elision of the different “planes,” the corresponding compression of “distance,” the conflation of separate “objects,” and the proleptic movement of the “background,” all of which are exemplified in both The Kitchen Table and The Basket of Apples. In the earlier work, the ginger jar merges with the shadow of a closely similar tone behind it to its right, just as the teapot blends in with the area of tablecloth behind it to its left. But in the later painting, the background to the right of the stack of ladyfingers slips over the plate in front of it (fig. 10.6), an effect known as passage.^[11] Similar effects can be found in several other areas of the painting, including the fruit inside the basket and on the tea towel where an area of white rides over the pink stripe below the large red apple (fig. 10.7). In both works, the high viewpoint causes the tabletop to appear to rise up and press forward. This effect is complicated in The Basket of Apples, however, by the artist’s reworking of the table’s left edge (fig. 10.8), which makes the top warp downward in this area. Conversely, in The Kitchen Table, overpainting in the bottom right corner of the floor causes it to seemingly lurch forward. The top edge of the handle on the basket in The Kitchen Table is also calculated to align with the floor line, creating a “false attachment” of the two that fools the visual system into collapsing the distance between them.^[12] By contrast, the basket in The Basket of Apples is plainly made to lean forward by being propped up on a block or brick. The painter Louis Le Bail observed Cezanne “leaning, tilting, balancing the fruits as he wanted” when painting still lifes in the later 1890s, “using farthings and halfpennies.”^[13] But no amount of such manipulation would explain the degree to which objects seem to topple forward in either painting. 7

Figs. 10.6–10.8

Fig. 10.6

Detail of *passage* in the edge of the plate in Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Fig. 10.7

Detail of *passage* in the tea towel and fruit in Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Top half and left side are filled with an irregular expanse of medium to dark brown. On the right, a large triangular area of pale blue and white with green streaks angles downward, with a small off-white patch near its left edge. The lower third shows a horizontal band of brown, and a thin strip of gray-blue runs along the bottom, with a small touch of green near the center. — Fig. 10.8

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing overpainting at the left edge of the table. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Individual objects also exhibit distortions in their shapes and proportions, just as Geffroy described. Notably, the teapot in The Kitchen Table leans to the left, as does the bottle in The Basket of Apples. The bottom edge of the tabletop in the earlier painting is also broken or discontinuous, just like the top edge of its counterpart in the later work. (The situation with the lower edge is similar but less easily analyzed, as mentioned above.) Additionally, the plate in The Basket of Apples is elongated into an ellipse, and several of the more prominent fruit in the painting bulge, not unlike the ginger jar in The Kitchen Table. 8

Cezanne’s “Way of Seeing”

In his important book on the artist of 1927, Cézanne: A Study of His Development, Roger Fry offered a formalist explanation of such “deformations,” suggesting that they were the upshot of Cezanne’s “harmonic sense” of volume and design.^[14] With regard to another still life, Still Life with Fruit Dish of 1879–80 (fig. 10.9), he argued that “the circles of the Compotier and glass seen in perspective give us ovals, and the oval is a form that … harmonizes ill with the circle and the right line. So that one is not astonished to find that Cézanne has deformed them into oblongs with rounded ends. This deformation deprives the oval of its elegance and thinness and gives it the same character of gravity and amplitude that the spheres possess.”^[15] This way of thinking was influential well beyond Cezanne scholarship, and it found an important echo in Earle Loran’s Cézanne’s Composition of 1950, which took a more surface-oriented approach to the artist’s sense of design. This emerges in Loran’s diagram of the distortions created by the “multiple viewpoints” implied by the objects in The Kitchen Table (fig. 10.10). This way of thinking implies that the apparent distortions in The Basket of Apples had a similar decorative purpose.9

Along the top, a blue background shows soft pale shapes. In the center, a large white pedestal bowl holds small green grapes and several round fruits in red, orange, and yellow; to its right, a stemmed goblet sits near the back. In the foreground, a white cloth spreads over a brown tabletop with several round fruits in green and red-orange and a light-colored knife at the right; the bowl is larger than any single fruit, and the grapes are the smallest elements. — Fig. 10.9

Paul Cezanne. *Still Life with Fruit Dish*, 1879–80 (FWN 780). Oil on canvas; 46.4 × 54.6 cm (18 1/4 × 21 1/2 in.). Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, 69.1991.

Top area of a square frame shows vertical bars at left, a small rectangular shape near the center, and a large basket with a curved handle at right containing folded, irregular forms. Across the middle and lower areas, a table holds a draped cloth, a lidded jar, a pitcher, several round objects, and a cone; the basket is larger than the nearby containers, and the table spans the lower third. Straight and dotted arrows cross the frame from various directions, with small eye icons at the left, right, and bottom edges pointing inward; all elements are black outlines on a white background. — Fig. 10.10

Diagram of distortion through shifting of eye levels (and split tabletop). From Earle Loran, *Cézanne’s Composition* (University of California Press, 1950), 77.

When speaking to the artists and critics who visited him in later life, Cezanne did acknowledge that his work contained distortions of the kind observed by Geffroy. But whereas Fry maintained that it was Cezanne’s sense of design that created his “deformations” by controlling his “vision of the object,” the artist took the opposite view.^[16] He told his interlocutors that it was his “way of seeing” (optique) that caused (what they saw as) his distortions. The clearest such statement is the one Émile Bernard recalled he made in 1904 or 1905 regarding Cezanne’s elision of planes and discontinuous horizontals: “The fault Cézanne had most to complain about was his eyesight. ‘I see planes overlapping,’ he told me, ‘and sometimes straight lines seem to drop.’ These defects, which I thought were the result of deliberate neglect, he blamed on weakness and deficiency of his way of seeing.”^[17] Cezanne also admitted to making verticals slope and shapes bulge when speaking with R. P. Rivière and Jacques Schnerb in 1905: “Cézanne did not pretend to be unaware of the asymmetry of his bottles or the faulty perspective of his plates. Showing one of his watercolors, he corrected a bottle that was not vertical with his fingernail and said, as if apologizing: ‘I am a primitive, I have a lazy eye. I’ve been to the École twice, but I don’t make a set piece. If I get interested in a head, I make it too big.’”^[18]10

Although it might seem from such statements that Cezanne was confessing to making mistakes in his works, he was doing nothing of the sort. Rather, he was indulging in what Provençals call the blauge, or a practical joke at the expense of outsiders, and françiots (“frenchies” from the North) in particular.^[19] He was, in other words, playing up to his visitors’ sense of his failure to draw “correctly,” in the last case by suggesting he was a Primitive, or naive pre-Renaissance painter of the kind he elsewhere said he disliked.^[20] Cezanne was being sincere, however, when he told Bernard that he was the “primitive”—or pioneer—of “the path” he had “discovered.”^[21] This remark is consistent, then, with his advice to Bernard: “What the painter needs first and foremost, is a personal way of seeing.”^[22]11

Gestalt-Free Perception

If Cezanne’s personal way of seeing is interpreted broadly as his particular “take” on the world, it also was—or rested on—a specific set of visual practices. These included staring at wallpaper until its pattern popped out, looking fixedly at faces until their meaningful gestalt disappeared, and steadily regarding the edges of objects until they started to vacillate.^[23] According to Joachim Gasquet, moreover, Cezanne routinely practiced intense and protracted staring.^[24] Describing a session during which Cezanne was painting sur le motif, Gasquet recalled how “his eyes came to bear upon objects. Slowly they … laid hold of them. They fixated fearsomely on one point. ‘I can’t tear them away,’ he once told me… . ‘They are so firmly glued to the spot I am looking at, it feels like they will bleed.’ Minutes, sometimes a quarter of an hour, would slip by like this.”^[25] Gasquet also described another conversation in which Cezanne told him, “The slightest faltering of the eye ruins the whole thing… . It’s terrible, the way my eye gets glued to a tree trunk or a lump of earth. The pull is so strong that it’s painful tearing it away.” “Yes,” Gasquet replied, “I’ve noticed you sometimes wait twenty minutes between two brushstrokes.”^[26]12

These recollections lend credence to the argument advanced by the art theorist Anton Ehrenzweig in The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing that the distinctive “distortions” in Cezanne’s works can be attributed to his habits attending to what lay in “peripheral vision” while sustaining “prolonged fixation.”^[27] He claimed that—in general—doing so dis-integrated the elements out of which the unified objects of vision are normally formed.^[28]13

A particular distortion Cezanne’s staring produced, according to Ehrenzweig, was the “broken” (or discontinuous) tabletop.^[29] This, he specified, was created by the artist’s habit of focusing on a cloth overhanging the table’s edge, as seen in the diagram that captures the situation in The Basket of Apples (fig. 10.11). The same argument implies that the top edge is broken into three sections, each at a different height, because Cezanne focused on the basket, bottle, and plate that occlude it.^[30]14

At the top, a large black-outlined rectangle extends left to right on a white background. In the center, overlapping the lower edge of the rectangle, a smaller irregular polygon tilts downward, with two parallel dashed lines running horizontally across its middle. The smaller shape spans about half the width of the larger rectangle and extends slightly below it. — Fig. 10.11

Cezanne’s “broken” table edge. From Anton Ehrenzweig, *The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing: An Introduction to a Theory of Unconscious Perception* (Routledge; Kegan Paul, 1953), 201.

Ehrenzweig also explains the rising up of tabletops in Cezanne’s works in terms of the appearance they assume in peripheral vision. He maintains, more specifically, that their “toppling” appearance was created by the artist’s habit of focusing on the rear edge, which makes the front edge appear shorter, thereby reversing its normal perspective.^[31] So, too, the bulging of objects in Cezanne’s still lifes can be attributed to peripheral vision, if Ehrenzweig is to be believed.^[32] Ehrenzweig’s argument goes some way toward explaining the sloping verticals of Cezanne’s bottles as well. Drawing on the psychology of his time, he adduced a diagram of the Köhler effect that shows the kind of deformation a square undergoes in peripheral vision when its top left corner is fixated on (fig. 10.12).^[33] There is some evidence to suggest that the effect became more pronounced for Cezanne the more he fixated on things, inasmuch as the paint buildup in several of his paintings increased in proportion with the time he spent on them.^[34] This is certainly true of The Basket of Apples. Its surface shows that Cezanne overpainted and restated both sides of the bottle’s neck, exaggerating the slant in the process (see Application/technique and artist’s revision in the Technical Report).^[35]15

At the upper left, a large dashed black circle surrounds a small solid black circle. From the small circle, a black line extends right to form the top edge of a rounded square-like outline, then continues down the right side, curves along the bottom, and rises up the left side back to the small circle; this outline is larger than both circles and occupies the right half. A short vertical line drops from the small circle to define the left edge of the outline. Lines are black on a white background. — Fig. 10.12

Peripheral distortions of a square. From Anton Ehrenzweig, *The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing: An Introduction to a Theory of Unconscious Perception* (Routledge; Kegan Paul, 1953), 197.

Although the effect of Cezanne’s manner of seeing is to make individual objects look distorted when viewed in isolation, they appear differently when seen in the context of the painting as whole. As the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed out, the “overall composition” of the work serves to resolve “distortions” in this wider context so that they produce the “impression of an emerging order, an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes.”^[36] By this account, the slightly disjointed composition of The Basket of Apples produced by distortions in individual objects has the effect of making the scene appear to coalesce. To consider this notion in conjunction with Ehrenzweig’s argument: Cezanne brings the spectator back in this painting to a stage where perception is not yet finalized in order to show things in the process of taking shape.16

“Multiple Viewpoints”

Loran saw what he described as Cezanne’s “multiple viewpoints” as purely imaginary distortions designed to enhance the design of the painting, but they can also be ascribed to perceptual causes not dependent on Cezanne moving around his motifs (which he did not).^[37] For Ehrenzweig, multiple viewpoints is in fact the “gestalt-free” effect produced by the “successive sectional glances” we take when scanning a scene, before synthesizing them into a “composite memory image.”^[38] Similarly, Merleau-Ponty describes the warping of tabletops in Cezanne as a function of “the different points of view” that such surfaces present to the “eye” that “runs over” them.^[39]17

Merleau-Ponty gives another, richer account of so-called multiple viewpoints under the rubric of a view upon a scene “from everywhere.”^[40] This rests on the idea that we can “inhabit” the different objects in a scene, including the houses in a landscape, and even the objects in a still life.^[41] Since these act as “spectators” of one another, inhabiting them allows us to see “aspects” of them that are “hidden” from a spectator stationed outside the scene.^[42] Seeing in this way would certainly explain the otherwise incongruous bulging and warping exhibited by objects in the painting. Such effects are more pronounced in other still lifes, notably Still Life with Apples and Pears (see fig. 10.2). Here, for instance, the large red-and-yellow apple at the rear presents more of its curved surface than it would if represented in perspective, as though we are allowed to see what its neighbors on either side can see of it.^[43]18

Sight and Touch

No account of the so-called distortions in The Basket of Apples could be complete without some explanation of how they express the close connection between “sight” and “touch,” which is implicit in Merleau-Ponty’s account of the “potential movement” involved in taking a view “from everywhere.”^[44] Cezanne himself drew this connection in conversation with the amateur painter Jules Borély in 1902 when he told him, “Look, that tree trunk: between us and it there is a space, an atmosphere, I grant you that. But then again it is this palpable, resistant trunk, this body.”^[45] The way of seeing Cezanne set out here is closely consistent with one described by Merleau-Ponty when he argued that visual experience has not only a conscious, “reflective” side, in which objects appear remote from us, but also an unconscious, “primordial” dimension, in which “touch and sight” concur to facilitate a “blind palpation” of objects that bestows “proximity” on them even at a distance.^[46] Seeing thus construed is directly germane to The Basket of Apples, insofar as it helps explain why Cezanne’s apples look tangible. 19

Fully explaining how the artist produced this effect requires a related scientific theory, however: the “two visual systems” hypothesis proposed by David Milner and Melvyn Goodale in the 1990s. This divides perception into a “vision for perception,” which uses the data furnished by the eyes to construct our familiar visual experience, and a “vision for action,” which uses the same input to inform the brain’s motor system how to act on objects, without making that information conscious.^[47] And while vision for perception relies on “allocentric” information concerning the spatial positions of objects in a scene relative to one another, vision for action exploits “egocentric” information about the absolute position of objects (coded in terms of their distance from the spectator).^[48] The two systems nevertheless communicate through “cross talk,” so that visual information can shed light on the movements required by action.^[49]20

All this helps explain how Cezanne made things look palpable in The Basket of Apples with the idea that it captures what the psychologist Dhanraj Vishwanath calls the “plastic effect” of visual experience. This term refers to how things appear “touchable” and “graspable” when they provide us with reliable egocentric information that gives us a sense of our “embodiment” in space.^[50] They do so best when they are close and offer precise information about stereo disparity and motion parallax, especially, through the pronouncedly different views they present to the two eyes. Cezanne’s fusion of different views is thus arguably what makes objects in The Basket of Apples look so “palpable,” since it conveys the same kind of information. 21

Another aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of vision that illuminates The Basket of Apples is what he describes as “narcissism,” a term expressing that to see the world is to “see oneself” (although not as an object).^[51] This happens because “things” reciprocate the advances of our “fleshly eyes” by implanting a “carnal formula of their presence” in us.^[52] The workings of this process help explain in particular the metaphorically human character of Cezanne’s apples.^[53] This is brought out (a little too) poetically in an account Gasquet gave of a conversation with Cezanne about portraits. He recalled that the artist told him: 22

“People think that a sugar bowl does not have a physiognomy, or a soul. But this changes every day, too. You have to know how to handle them, how to coax them, these gentlemen… . These glasses, these plates, they talk to each other. Endless confidences. I’ve given up on flowers. They wilt immediately. Fruits are more faithful. They like to have their portraits painted. They seem to beg you to forgive them for fading… . They come to you with all their scents, telling you about the fields they left behind, the rain that fed them, the dawns they have seen.”^[54]23

Gasquet’s embellishment notwithstanding, it is difficult to resist the temptation to see the fruit in The Basket of Apples almost as “people” consorting with one another.

Paul Smith
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Technical Summary

Cezanne painted The Basket of Apples on a no. 25 portrait (figure) standard-size canvas. The canvas was primed with an off-white ground layer, probably after it was stretched. The painting may retain its original stretcher. Cezanne planned the composition using a fairly extensive, loose freehand underdrawing in a dry medium, which he then reinforced in areas with black painted lines. He did not precisely follow the underdrawing in the painting stage but used it as a rough guide for the placement of compositional forms. The tilt of the bottle and the disjunctions in the table edges were planned from the outset, though Cezanne accentuated some of these incongruities as he built up the painting. Overall, the work is quite thinly painted, with some passages left in a relatively sketchy state with open brushwork that barely covers the ground. By contrast, Cezanne rendered the oranges with thick paint applications and deliberated over the relationship between the white cloth and the fruit, working back and forth between the two in an incremental stroke-by-stroke manner. He also reworked an area of the background wall around the stack of biscuits as he honed the color relationships and contrasts. Cezanne signed the painting at lower left.25

Layered Image Viewer

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0007 Background — Natural light

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0000 XR — X-ray

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0001 IR Imaging (0.9–1.05 µm) — Reflected infrared (0.9–1.05 µm)

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0002 TRNSIR (0.9–1.05 µm) — Transmitted infrared (0.9–1.05 µm)

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0003 UV — Ultraviolet-induced luminescence

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0006 RKG — Raking light

cez 1926 252 regOVR FINAL anno masked 0004 IRG annos — Infrared reflectogram

Fig. 10.13

Cezanne’s The Basket of Apples (c. 1893). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252. Interactive image. Use the icons at lower right and the slide bar to compare conservation images and overlays.

Signature

Signature/Stamp: Signed (lower left corner): P. Cezanne (in reddish-purple and blue paint; looks like two colors unmixed and picked up on the brush, or possibly signed first in blue and reinforced in reddish purple) (figs. 10.14–10.15).
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Figs. 10.14–10.15

Top edge shows a narrow band of dark brown with a thin bluish line. Below it, a wide tan area with light brown and yellow tones fills most of the space. Near the lower center, dark purplish cursive text reads “P. Cézanne,” with a long sweeping underline, spanning about half the width. — Fig. 10.14

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the signature. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Top to bottom, a tan surface with fine hairline cracks fills the frame. Across the middle, an irregular splotchy mark in dark purple with red patches curves from left toward right and spans a few millimeters. A smaller partial dark mark sits near the left edge. At the bottom right, a black horizontal scale bar labeled 5.0 mm indicates size. — Fig. 10.15

Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing part of the signature. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Structure and Technique

Support

Canvas: Standard format: The painting corresponds closely to a no. 25 portrait (figure) standard size (81 × 65 cm).^[55]27

Weave: Plain weave. Average thread count (standard deviation): 13.6V (0.3) × 11.9H (0.5) threads/cm. The vertical threads were determined to correspond to the warp and the horizontal threads to the weft.^[56]28

Canvas characteristics: Medium weight, open weave. There are a few nubs and some variations in thread thickness across the canvas.29

Stretching: Current stretching: Dates to the undocumented aqueous lining (see Conservation History). Metal tacks spaced 3–4 cm apart.30

Original stretching: There is evenly spaced cusping on all four sides (slightly more pronounced on the left and right edges, corresponding to the weft threads) that relates to the original stretching and indicates that the original tacks were spaced approximately 5–6 cm apart.31

Stretcher/strainer: Current stretcher: Six-membered wooden stretcher with a vertical and a horizontal crossbar, butt-ended mortise and tenon joints, and twelve keys. The stretcher has an aged appearance and may be original to the painting (fig. 10.16). Depth: 2 cm; stretcher/crossbar width: 7 cm.32

Original stretcher: See above.33

Top edge shows a worn brown wooden frame surrounding a tan canvas back. Across the middle, two brown stretcher bars cross to form a plus sign, with small white paper labels attached near their intersection and on the right bar. At each corner, triangular wood wedges hold the canvas, and red and blue numbers and notes are marked on the frame and bars. Colors are mostly brown and beige, with white from the labels and touches of red and blue writing. — Fig. 10.16

Verso of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Manufacturer’s/supplier’s marks: None observed in current examination or documented in previous examinations.34

Preparatory Layers

Sizing: Examination of a paint sample cross section under UV illumination shows evidence of a light-blue luminescence between the canvas and the ground, suggesting the presence of an organic layer, possibly glue sizing (fig. 10.17).^[57]35

Against a dark blue background, an elongated pale cream object extends from left to right, thicker in the middle and tapering to a pointed tip on the right; a small dark spot is near the left end. The upper side shows scattered tiny specks in blue, green, and red, while a faint light blue band runs along the lower edge. A white scale bar labeled 100 µm sits near the lower left, and the object spans several times that length. — Fig. 10.17

Photomicrograph of a cross section from Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing a possible size layer, ground, and a blue paint layer under UV illumination. Original magnification: 200x. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Ground application/texture: The ground was probably applied after the canvas was stretched. The original tacking edges have been cut off, and the edges of the painting are currently covered by brown paper tape (see Conservation History), but the relatively strong, even cusping around all four edges indicates that the unprimed canvas was mounted on the original stretcher when the ground was applied.36

Color: Warm, off-white. The ground is exposed in small areas at gaps in the brushwork (fig. 10.18).
37

Top left is mottled gray, transitioning to off-white in the center and yellow toward the top right. Along the bottom edge is a dark brown horizontal band with a thin lighter line just above it. Across the surface are many small dark specks and short dashes scattered evenly. In the bottom left, a black label reads “5.0 mm” beside a scale bar. — Fig. 10.18

Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the off-white ground where it is exposed between brushstrokes. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Materials/composition: Analysis indicates that the ground is composed principally of lead white with minor to trace amounts of barium sulfate, iron oxide/earth pigments, calcium compounds, and a few particles of ultramarine blue.^[58] Binder: Oil (estimated).38

Compositional Planning/Underdrawing/Painted Sketch

Extent/character: Infrared reflectography and microscopic examination of the painting surface revealed the presence of fairly extensive underdrawing. The underdrawing is loose and roughly indicates the placement of the compositional elements (the table, folds of the white cloth, basket, apples, bottle, plate, and biscuits) with quickly sketched lines (fig. 10.19). 39

Fig. 10.19

Infrared-reflectogram (Goodrich, 1.5–1.7 µm) and natural-light image of Cezanne’s The Basket of Apples (c. 1893) showing Cezanne’s underdrawing. The Art Institute of Chicago.

Medium/technique: Cezanne used both a dry medium, possibly charcoal, and paint applied with a brush. The paint consistency ranges from very dilute and fluid to more bodied and opaque. Cezanne evidently used the dry medium first, mapping out all the major elements of the composition. Some of this drawing is visible on the surface of the painting, most noticeably through the light-colored paint of the tablecloth (fig. 10.20). The painted underdrawing lines appear mainly in the fruit, tablecloth folds, and biscuits. Cezanne mostly used black paint (fig. 10.21); however, at the opening of the bottle and at the edges of some of the apples he used dark-blue paint (fig. 10.22).
40

Figs. 10.20–10.22

Top area shows pale blue-gray with faint bluish and green patches, transitioning into a wide light beige region across the center. A narrow, dark blue-green diagonal band runs from the upper right toward the center-right, edged by a thin line of green. The lower left corner holds a dark gray-green wedge, while the lower right and central areas are mostly light beige with a subtle bluish tint. — Fig. 10.20

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing some underdrawing lines visible on the surface of the painting. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Top half shows a large brown area on the left and lighter colors on the right, including pale blue and mint green. A diagonal pale blue band runs from the upper right to the lower left, edged with dark blue and black, with a small off‑white curved shape near its lower section. The right side has irregular patches of light blue and green, and the bottom edge is a narrow brown strip. — Fig. 10.21

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the black “painted underdrawing” used to indicate a fold in the tablecloth. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Top section is reddish-brown with fine cracks, shifting to very dark brown at the upper right. Across the middle, a narrow, wavy band of dark blue-purple runs left to right, with small yellow-orange patches along it. The lower half is a broad greenish-tan area with scattered tiny white specks and cracks; a white horizontal scale bar labeled 5.0 mm sits at the bottom left. — Fig. 10.22

Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing a glimpse of the dark-blue “painted underdrawing” along the edge of one of the apples. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Revisions: Cezanne made no major compositional changes or deviations from the preliminary underdrawing, though the placement of some of the apples and the tablecloth folds are shifted with respect to the underdrawing.
41

Paint Layer

Application/technique and artist’s revision: The technical images indicate that Cezanne followed the basic compositional arrangement laid out in the underdrawing, making only minor adjustments, mainly to the folds of the white cloth and the placement of the fruit. The slightly off-kilter arrangement of the still life was indicated in the underdrawing, which shows that the front and back tabletop edges were disconnected from the outset and that Cezanne initially drew the bottle, just to the left of where he ultimately painted it, with a pronounced leftward tilt (fig. 10.23). As he painted the bottle in its final position, he adjusted its left contour by bringing the paint of the background wall over its edge in a way that flattened the curve of the bottle’s shoulder and accentuated the tilt to the left.42

At the left, a large tilted basket holds many round fruits; toward the center, a tall, narrow bottle rises above the tabletop, and at the right a round plate carries several stacked rectangular pieces. Round fruits are scattered across the table from left to right, with a large draped cloth covering the lower half and partly wrapping a few fruits. All elements appear in shades of gray, with the bottle the tallest object and the basket and cloth occupying the most space. — Fig. 10.23

Infrared reflectogram (Goodrich, 1.5–1.7 µm) of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing Cezanne’s underdrawing. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

In general, the paint layers were not very thickly built up, and there are areas where the ground is visible through thin, open brushstrokes—for example, at the lower edges of the table. The densest areas of paint application include the oranges, some of the apples, the folded peaks of the white cloth, and regions of the wall around the still-life objects where Cezanne made some late adjustments to the local surface color. Cezanne employed different paint-handling techniques in the apples versus the oranges: The flat, gently curved brushstrokes of the apples suggest smooth, rounded forms, whereas the denser paint applications he used for the oranges, sometimes daubed on perpendicular to the surface of the canvas in more compact touches of color, evoke the rougher texture of orange peel (fig. 10.24). Cezanne indicated the planes of the white tablecloth almost exclusively through subtle chromatic shifts rather than tonal modeling; the cloth is actually not white at all but a range of pale-pink, yellow, blue, green, and gray hues with some dark (almost black) linear strokes used to define the edges and the contours of the folds (fig. 10.25). Cezanne’s use of a variety of colors to represent a white cloth is particularly evident in the infrared false-color image, where pigments such as ultramarine blue and viridian appear red, while emerald green and Prussian blue appear blue (fig. 10.26).^[59]
43

Figs. 10.24–10.26

Two side-by-side panels show round fruit resting on a white cloth. In both, from top left to right, a red‑yellow fruit sits near a dark area, a yellow‑green fruit is at the top right, and a larger red‑orange fruit lies in the lower center on the cloth, which has white, blue‑green, and pink streaks; a brown surface fills the upper background. The right panel displays brighter, clearer colors and lighter blues and greens in the cloth, while the left panel appears darker and more muted. — Fig. 10.24

Raking- and natural-light details of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the different paint handling in the apples and the oranges. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

At the top, yellow and orange round fruit sit near a dark area, with pale blue-gray fabric folded between them. In the middle, angular folds of light blue, white, and mint fabric cross diagonally, partially surrounding more orange fruit. At the bottom, a single red-orange round fruit rests against broad, sweeping folds of bluish fabric. The fruit appear medium-sized relative to the large fabric folds, with warm oranges, yellows, and reds contrasted against cool blues, whites, and greens. — Fig. 10.25

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the subtle chromatic shifts used to create the planes and folds of the tablecloth. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

On a tabletop, a pink‑white cloth fills the foreground with several round fruits in yellow, green, orange, and bluish tones resting on it. To the left, a tipped basket contains many similar fruits; at center, a tall dark brown bottle rises behind the cloth. To the right, a white plate holds several light yellow, finger‑shaped pieces with more fruit nearby and a single pear‑shaped fruit at the far right; the bottle is the tallest object, while the fruits are smaller and clustered around the basket and plate against a muted purple background. — Fig. 10.26

IInfrared false-color image of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Cezanne paid particular attention to the relationship between the fruit and the tablecloth. The manner in which he worked back and forth between the two, dragging his brush over the surface in discrete, unblended strokes, emphasizes the material qualities of the paint and, at times, creates ambiguities in the spatial relationships between objects. For example, after he had painted the two apples (or oranges?) directly in front of the bottle, he added strokes of light-greenish gray to suggest additional sections of cloth that overlap the fruit. The ragged, “floating” strokes, which do not completely obscure the fruit beneath, seem to circumvent any realistic illusion of how the fabric could actually fall (fig. 10.27). Furthermore, Cezanne added some of the dark blue-gray strokes that define the shadowed folds and edges of the white cloth in the later stages of painting. These dark contour strokes are often near, but not exactly at, the fabric’s edges. As a result, even though they should recede behind the lighter surface planes of the fabric, they are, at times, both physically and visually in front of them (fig. 10.28). The red vermillion border of the cloth, also added later in the painting, seems to follow its own course, independent of the fabric; for example, at the highest peak, the red brushstroke is drawn smoothly across the surface, as if unaffected by the crumpled white fabric underneath. Cezanne indicated only a slight shadow or depression through a subtle contrast of complementary hues, applying a thin stroke of green near the center of the red band. Where the cloth drapes over the front edge of the table, the red stripe continues in an almost straight line, overlapping a shadowed fold in the cloth at the upper end of the stripe. Just to the left of this, on the flat, folded section of cloth, Cezanne added final strokes of white that implausibly bisect the red stripe (fig. 10.29).
44

Figs. 10.27–10.29

At the top, a dark bluish-black area borders two large round orange shapes, one near the upper center and one at the upper right. Across the middle, a diagonal band of pale gray-white and light green runs left to right, with patches of blue and olive surrounding it. Near the bottom left, soft strokes of light blue, pink, and mint sit beside a deeper blue wedge that curves upward toward the orange forms. The orange shapes are the largest elements, with the surrounding colors appearing as smaller patches and bands. — Fig. 10.27

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing how Cezanne worked back and forth between the fruit and the tablecloth. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Top left shows a small yellow‑green rounded shape beside a dark blue band on a pale blue‑gray background; moving right, brown and olive patches sit near the upper edge. The middle area is mostly light blue‑gray with dark blue lines running diagonally, and a small pink patch near the upper center‑right. Lower right features a large round red‑orange form, larger than the yellow‑green shape, set within surrounding blue‑gray and green areas. — Fig. 10.28

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the shadowed folds on the surface of the tablecloth. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Top left holds a round shape colored orange with a yellow center against blue‑green. Across the middle, broad areas of pale green, cream, and light blue form angled blocks, with a dark blue line running diagonally from left to right. Near the upper right are short strokes of red and green, and near the lower right a vertical pinkish‑brown stroke extends upward. The bottom area is mostly pale blue and beige with irregular edges and a band of darker blue along the lower left. — Fig. 10.29

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing the sequence of brushwork in a section of the tablecloth. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Cezanne’s efforts to build and harmonize the color relationships within the work are often focused on areas where neighboring forms interact. For example, successive strokes of color added along the contours of the apples often interrupt or obscure the earlier blue contour lines he used to define the edges (fig. 10.30). Near the right edge, he reinforced the contour of the pear by pulling the dark-blue paint of the shadow, as well as some of the ochre tones from the tabletop, around the lower edge of the pear. In a similar vein, he reworked the background wall around the plate of biscuits using slightly darker hues of blue-green paint, which he brought down and around some of the biscuits, creating the suggestion of shadows while increasing the contrast between the biscuits and the wall behind them.
45

Top area, left to right, shows a green fruit beside orange and yellow fruits resting in a dark curved container. The center has several overlapping round and oval fruits with mixed patches of yellow, green, and red, medium in size and closely packed. Bottom-right features two pale yellow-green fruits next to a light blue-white area with a thin red streak, with a dark background surrounding the cluster. — Fig. 10.30

Detail of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing touches of color built up around the contours of the apples. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Painting tools: Brushes, including flat ferrule.46

Palette: Analysis indicates the presence of the following pigments: lead white, zinc white, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, Prussian blue, emerald green,^[60] viridian, yellow ochre, vermillion, and probable red lake.^[61]47

Binding media: Oil (estimated).^[62]48

Surface Finish

Varnish layer/media: The painting is currently unvarnished (see Conservation History) and exhibits subtle variations in surface sheen.49

Conservation History

The painting was lined with an aqueous adhesive in an undocumented treatment. The original tacking edges were probably removed prior to lining, and the paper edge strips may have been added after this treatment. A fine, open-weave fabric interleaf appears to be sandwiched between the original canvas and the lining canvas.50

In 1949 Leo Marzolo cleaned the painting.^[63]51

In 1965 Alfred Jakstas removed the existing varnish and applied a spray coat of polyvinyl acetate (PVA) AYAA. He inpainted a few small paint losses at the corners and applied a final spray coat of PVA AYAA.^[64]52

In 2020 Allison Langley removed the PVA varnish and left the surface unvarnished. Minor abrasion along the edges was lightly toned.^[65]53

Condition Summary

The painting is in excellent condition overall. It is lined with an aqueous adhesive and stretched taut and in plane. There are microcracks in the ground and paint layers along the canvas threads and localized areas of drying cracks where thin paint layers were applied over slower-drying layers. Some marks and accretions on the surface of the painting appear to be accidents of studio handling or the result of stacking of paintings—for instance, a horizontal linear indentation made in the soft paint at around 3 cm from the top edge, possibly the result of another painting or stretcher having been rested against it. There is also some paint transfer and what appears to be a fingerprint made in the wet paint at the top edge, near the center (fig. 10.31).54

At the top, a narrow horizontal band of brown runs across; just below it, a pale cream set of tightly curved ridges forms an oval pattern. The middle and lower areas are filled with light blue-green color, showing faint lines, small dark specks, and tiny cracks. At the bottom left, a black scale bar labeled 5.0 mm provides size reference, with the ridged pattern positioned just below the brown band and spanning the upper center. — Fig. 10.31

Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s *The Basket of Apples* (c. 1893) showing a fingerprint made in the wet paint. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.252.

Kim Muir with Giovanni Verri
55

Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939), Paris, by Nov. 1895.^[66]56

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris;^[67]57

Paul Cassirer, Berlin, June 1, 1904.^[68]58

Max Linde, Lübeck, Germany, June 1, 1904.^[69]59

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, by July 1907;^[70]60

Sent to Paul Cassirer, Berlin, July 1907;^[71]61

Returned to Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, Nov. 1908.^[72]62

Jos Hessel (1859–1942), Paris, by 1913 until at least 1920.^[73]63

Paul Rosenberg, Paris, by 1922;^[74]64

Sold to Frederick Clay Bartlett (1873–1953), Chicago [through Joseph Stransky of French Galleries, New York], by 1925;^[75]65

Given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1926.66

Paris, Galerie Vollard, Cézanne, Nov.–Dec. 1895, no cat.67

Berlin, Paul Cassirer, Sonderausstellung Paul Cézanne, Apr. 22–June 15, 1904, no cat., as Korb mit Äpfeln.68

Berlin, Paul Cassirer, XI. Jahrgang, Winter 1908/1909, II. Ausstellung, Oct. 15–Nov. 10, 1908, cat. 17, as Apfel, Flasche und Kuchen.69

Paris, Hôtel de la revue “Les Arts,” Exposition d’art moderne, June 6–July 6, 1912, cat. 3, as Pommes (organized by Manzi, Joyant & Cie.).70

Paris, Paul Rosenberg, Art français du XIX^e siècle au profit de l’Association Générale des mutilés de la guerre, June 25–July 13, 1917, cat. 5, as Corbeille de pommes.71

Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, L’art français au XIX^e siècle, 1919, no cat.72

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Cézanne, Dec. 1–18, 1920, cat. 28, as Les pommes.73

Paris, Paul Rosenberg, Exposition d’œuvres de grands maîtres du dix-neuvième siècle, May 3–June 3, 1922, cat. 9, as Le panier de pommes, 1885.74

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Exposition Paul Cézanne (au profit de la caisse du monument Cézanne), Mar. 3–24, 1924, no cat.75

Minneapolis Institute of Art, Modern French Paintings from the Birch-Bartlett Collection, Apr. 1925, no cat.76

Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, French Painting of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Mar. 6–Apr. 6, 1929, cat. 6 (ill.), as La corbeille de pommes.77

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–Nov. 1, 1933, cat. 305, as c. 1885.78

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–Nov. 1, 1934, cat. 290, as c. 1885.79

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Cézanne, Nov. 10–Dec. 10, 1934, cat. 17, as c. 1885.80

Art Institute of Chicago, Cézanne: Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings; A Loan Exhibition, Feb. 7–Mar. 16, 1952, cat. 54 (ill.), as Still Life: The Basket of Apples, 1890–94; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Apr. 4–May 18, 1952.81

Washington, DC, Phillips Collection, Cézanne: An Exhibition in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Phillips Collection, Feb. 27–Mar. 28, 1971, cat. 25 (ill.), as c. 1895; Art Institute of Chicago, Apr. 17–May 16, 1971; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, June 1–July 3, 1971 (Chicago only).82

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, Sept. 14, 2006–Jan. 7, 2007, cat. 44 (color ill.); Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 17–May 13, 2007; Paris, Musée d’Orsay, as De Cézanne à Picasso: Chefs-d’Œuvre de la Galerie Vollard, June 19–Sept. 16, 2007, cat. 32, as La Corbeille de pommes (color ill.).83

Fort Worth, Kimbell Museum of Art, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–Nov. 2, 2008, cat. 67 (color ill.).84

Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Cézanne and the Past: Tradition and Creativity, Oct. 25, 2012–Feb. 17, 2013, cat. 103 (color ill.).85

Art Institute of Chicago, Cezanne, May 15–Sept. 5, 2022, cat. 56 (color ill.); London, Tate Modern, Oct. 5, 2022–Mar. 12, 2023.
86

Charles Louis Borgmeyer, The Master Impressionists (Fine Arts, 1913), 230 (ill.), 232–33.87

“A Private Collection in Germany That Contains Fourteen Examples of the Art of Paul Cezanne, a Great Modern, Who Already Is Placed with the Old Masters,” New York Times, July 6, 1913, 15.88

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Exposition Cézanne du 1^er au 18 décembre 1920 (Bernheim-Jeune, 1920), cat. 28.89

Richard Brettell, Post-Impressionists (Art Institute of Chicago; Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 66 (color ill.), 67.90

Rebecca A. Rabinow, ed., Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art; Yale University Press, 2006), 342–43, cat. 44 (color ill.).91

Achim Borchardt-Hume et al., eds., Cezanne, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2022), 38, 50–51, 128–29 (color ill.), cat. 56, figs. 4, 6.92

Robert Jensen, “The 1895 Cézanne Show at Vollard’s Revisited,” Art and Visual Studies Faculty Working Papers 2 (2022): https://uknowledge.uky.edu/art_papers/2/.93

Paul Smith, “Looking Slowly with Cezanne,” Burlington Magazine 165 (April 2023): 422–24, fig. 1.94

Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, eds., The Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings of Paul Cezanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, accessed June 1, 2025, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com, no. 860 (color ill.).95

Undated

Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: A (fig. 10.32)
96

From top to bottom: a small off-white rectangular label with rounded corners and a red border sits on a brown surface, with a triangular notch missing from the upper edge. Centered on the label is a dark gray letter “A.” The label occupies the middle portion of the scene. — Fig. 10.32

Label, cat. 10.

Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: Hessel (fig. 10.33)
97

Top area shows a medium-brown surface with horizontal ridges and a small dark circular mark near the upper right. Across the middle from left to right, a red cursive line forms large letters that are faint and partially readable, stretching almost the full width. The lower area continues the same brown ridged surface, and the red line thins near the right edge. — Fig. 10.33

Inscription, cat. 10.

Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: printed sticker
Content: 47 (fig. 10.34)
98

Top center is a small off-white rectangular paper label, slightly tilted, with the number “47” printed in dark gray. The label has rough edges and a small notch on the left side. It rests on a medium-brown, slightly textured surface that fills the background. The label is much smaller than the surrounding area and is the only distinct element present. — Fig. 10.34

Number, cat. 10.

Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 47 (fig. 10.35)
99

Top area shows a light brown surface with subtle horizontal lines and small cracks. Near the center and lower half, thin red streaks run diagonally from upper left to lower right, with two shorter marks on the left and a longer mark on the right. In the lower section, a pair of faint horizontal lines spans across, with scattered small pits and a slightly darker brown spot near center-right. Colors are mainly brown with red accents. — Fig. 10.35

Number, cat. 10.

Number:
Location: lining canvas
Method: handwritten script
Content: 26.252 (fig. 10.36)
100

A textured brown background fills the frame. Near the center, red numerals read “26,252,” with a comma between 26 and 252. The numbers are small relative to the overall area and stand out against the plain brown surface. No people or other objects are visible. — Fig. 10.36

Number, cat. 10.

Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 1 (fig. 10.37)
101

Top area shows a rough tan panel with two small round holes aligned vertically near the center. Around the holes are blue marks: a diagonal stroke above the upper hole, a short slanted stroke between the holes, and a short horizontal stroke beneath the lower hole. The bottom portion features a darker brown band with parallel lines running left to right. — Fig. 10.37

Number, cat. 10.

Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 1 (fig. 10.38)
102

Top area shows a rough, light brown surface with faint scuffs. Near the upper center, a small blue mark forms a short vertical stroke with a slanted tip; near the lower center, a thin blue horizontal blue line sits above a shallow horizontal crease. Small dents and a tiny dark hole appear on the left side, and the blue marks are small compared to the overall surface. — Fig. 10.38

Number, cat. 10.

Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: R of O / [?] 21 / 26.252 (fig. 10.39)
103

A rough brown surface fills the frame, with lighter worn patches scattered from top to bottom. Near the upper left edge is a solid red rectangle; moving right toward the center are two small round holes and faded blue handwritten marks. Along the lower left is “26.25,” and near the lower right is “21,” both in blue. The elements are medium-sized relative to the surface, with a color palette of brown, red, and blue. — Fig. 10.39

Inscription, cat. 10.

Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: PC68914 (fig. 10.40)
104

Top section shows a tan, textured backing board. Across the upper-middle, a narrow brown wooden slat has small blue handwritten letters and numbers on it; the characters are partly faint and not fully legible. Bottom section includes a beige mesh fabric on the left and a darker brown rectangular panel on the right. — Fig. 10.40

Inscription, cat. 10.

Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: C 572 14 (fig. 10.41)
105

A horizontal brown board fills the frame, with visible grain lines and small nicks. From left to right, blue handwritten characters appear: a large “C,” then numbers that look like “5,” “7,” “2,” and on the far right a “7” and “1.” The writing is uneven and slightly faded, running roughly along the center of the board across most of its width. — Fig. 10.41

Inscription, cat. 10.

Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 32 × 25 1/16[?] (fig. 10.42)
106

Upper portion shows a medium-brown surface with a rough texture and scattered small holes, with faint blue markings including an X-like shape and light numerals. A horizontal seam line runs across the center, separating the upper and lower areas. In the lower left, a darker blue numeral “3” with a short curved stroke is visible on the brown surface, surrounded by small nicks and scratches. — Fig. 10.42

Inscription, cat. 10.

Pre-1980

Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script on printed label
Content: Appartient / à / M^r Jos Hessel / 4 [added later in blue crayon] (fig. 10.43)
107

A tan rectangular label with a blue double border patterned with small white leaf shapes fills the frame. In the center, cursive black text reads “Appartient à Mr Jos Kessel.” A diagonal teal stroke crosses the middle of the name, with a light brown smudge just to its right and a small dark dot near the lower-left border. — Fig. 10.43

Label, cat. 10.

Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script on printed label
Content: Appartient / à / Mr Jos Hessel / 3[b, 6 or l’?] avenue de l’Opera / 4 [added later in blue crayon] (fig. 10.44)
108

A tan paper label with a blue patterned border sits on a brown wooden surface. From top to bottom, large black cursive reads “Appartient,” a smaller “à” is centered below it, and a bold line of black cursive spells “Jas Hessel,” with a blue handwritten number “4” near the left side of that line; at the bottom right, smaller black cursive reads “3 Avenue de l’Opéra.” The label is rectangular with torn corners and visible creases, and the blue border repeats along the bottom edge. — Fig. 10.44

Label, cat. 10.

Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script on printed label with 1980–81 green-ink inventory stamp
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / Chicago, Illinois 60603 / ARTIST Cezanne, Paul / TITLE The Basket of Apples / MEDIUM Oil on canvas / DATE c1895 SIZE H. 65 x W. 80cm / COLLECTION Helen Birch / Bartlett Memorial Coll. / The following words must be used in connection with the / publication of this photograph: / 1926.252 / COURTESY OF / THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / [?] LIBCO
Green-ink stamp: Inventory – 1980 – 1981 (fig. 10.45)
109

A worn beige rectangular label with black printed headings and blue handwritten entries fills most of the frame, mounted on a brown surface with taped edges. From top to bottom, the header reads “THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO,” followed by fields: Artist “Cezanne, Paul,” Title “The Basket of Apples,” Medium “Oil on Canvas,” Date “c. 1895,” Size “H: 65 x W: 80 cm,” Collection “Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Coll.,” a note “The following words must be used in connection with the publication of this photograph: 1926.253,” and “Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.” The paper shows small tan stains, a tear near the lower left, and a slightly curled bottom edge. No people or additional images are present. — Fig. 10.45

Label, cat. 10.

Stamp:
Location: stretcher (in 3 places)
Method: green-ink inventory stamp
Content: Inventory – 1980 – 1981 (fig. 10.46)
110

Across a brown surface, a small, faint green stamp sits slightly right of center, with a short horizontal line beneath it and text that is not clearly readable. Near the left edge, a narrow vertical blue mark appears, darker than the background. The upper and lower areas are mostly plain brown with subtle texture, and no other distinct elements are visible. The green stamp occupies a small area relative to the overall surface. — Fig. 10.46

Stamp, cat. 10.

Post-1980

Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / ARTIST: Paul Cezanne / TITLE: Basket of Apples (c.1893) / MEDIUM: Oil on canvas / CREDIT: Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection / ACC.#: 1926.252 (fig. 10.47)
111

At the top, black text reads “THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO” on a light gray rectangular label with rounded corners. Below, left to right on separate lines: ARTIST: Paul Cezanne; TITLE: Basket of Apples (c. 1893); MEDIUM: Oil on canvas; CREDIT: Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection; ACC.#: 1926.252. The text is black, with some terms and names in bold, arranged in a single column from top to bottom. — Fig. 10.47

Label, cat. 10.

Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: De Cézanne à Picasso : chefs-d’oeuvre de la galerie / Vollard / The Art Institute of Chicago / The Basket of Apples/ Le Panier de pommes / Cézanne (Paul) / 32 / Musée d’Orsay / 18 juin au 16 septembre 2007 (fig. 10.48)
112

Top to bottom, a rectangular card with a light beige background shows black text: “De Cézanne à Picasso: chefs-d'œuvre de la galerie” and “Vollard.” Below, the lines read “The Art Institute of Chicago” and, in italics, “The Basket of Apples / Le Panier de pommes,” followed by “Cézanne (Paul)” and the number “32.” Near the bottom, a larger bold line reads “Musée d'Orsay,” with a final line “18 juin au 16 septembre 2007.” The card sits within a transparent border against a light gray surface. — Fig. 10.48

Label, cat. 10.

Entry by Paul Smith; Technical Report by Kim Muir and Giovanni Verri

Notes

I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Major Research Fellowship, which facilitated much of the research for this essay. For more on the fruit available to Cezanne, see cat. 8.
See Michel Fraisset, Les vies silencieuses de Cézanne (Office du Tourisme, Aix-en-Provence, 1999), no. 261. The “bouteille verre opaque marron—Goulot strié” is listed among the “objets identiques” to those once in the studio whose provenance is uncertain. It appeared for the first time in the most recent, 1998 inventory made by Fraisset.
These are crisper than biscuits cuillère, which are dusted with sugar. See also Richard Brettell, Post-Impressionists (Art Institute of Chicago; Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 67, which misidentifies the biscuits as dents de loup, which have three sides, two of which are flat, and three sharp, tapered edges.
For more on this red band, see cat. 8.
Gustave Geffroy, “L’art d’aujourd’hui: Paul Cézanne,” Le journal, quotidien, littéraire, artistique et politique, no. 544 (Mar. 25, 1894): 1: “Il est de toute évidence que le peintre … n’a pu vaincre la difficulté, que l’obstacle à la réalisation s’affirme pour tous les yeux. C’est un peu, et sans procédé, la touchante recherche des Primitifs. Il y a des absences de l’atmosphère, de la fluidité par laquelle les plans doivent s’espacer et le lointain se voir à sa distance. Les formes gauchissent parfois, les objets se mêlent, les proportions ne sont pas établies toujours avec la rigueur suffisante… . Les fonds parfois avancent, mais les nappes, les serviettes sont si souples, de blancs si nuancés, et les fruits sont de si naïves belles choses.” On Geffroy’s remarks about Cezanne’s gaucherie in 1894 and 1895, 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), 168, 189–92, 194.
Paul Cezanne to Geffroy, Mar. 26, 1894, in Paul Cézanne: Correspondence, ed. John Rewald (Paris: Grasset, 1978), 239: “J’ai lu hier la longue étude que vous m’avez consacrée à mettre en lumière les tentatives que j’ai fait en peinture. Je voulais en témoigner ma reconnaissance pour le sympathie que j’ai rencontré en vous.”
See John Rewald, Cézanne: Sa vie, son œuvre, son amitié pour Zola (Albin Michel, 1939), 336, citing a recollection communicated by Paul Signac: “Paul Alexis trouva le peintre en 1891, à Aix … . Paul Signac se rappelait qu’Alexis revint de ce voyage avec quatre tableaux de Cézanne, cadeaux de l’artiste, et dont deux étaient des natures mortes.” See also Robert William Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods and Their Theoretical Background” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1960), 20, which states that one of these was “definitely” The Kitchen Table.
See Robert Jensen, “The 1895 Cézanne Show at Vollard’s Revisited,” Art and Visual Studies Faculty Working Papers 2 (2022): https://uknowledge.uky.edu/art_papers/2/. On Cezanne’s practice of signing paintings, see cat. 2.
See the catalogue entry by Jayne Warman in Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow, exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art; Yale University Press, 2006), 342–43. The fact that Geffroy stated in his review of the Vollard exhibition that the works had no “signatures” lends support to Jensen’s contention that The Basket of Apples was given to Alexis. See Gustave Geffroy, “Paul Cezanne,” La vie artistique, 6^e série (H. Floury, 1900), 215; and Jensen, “1895 Cézanne Show,” https://uknowledge.uky.edu/art_papers/2/. It is not possible to trace the original article, which Geffroy claims here to have published on Nov. 16, 1895.
Geffroy, “Paul Cezanne,” 219: “ne vous arrêtez pas, à telle gaucherie, à tel manque de perspective, d’équilibre.”
For a discussion of passage, see Earle Loran, Cézanne’s Composition (University of California Press, 1950), 32–33, 65, 102, 115, 130. This draws on André Lhote’s Traité du paysage of 1939, which defines the effect as an “élément de reunion des formes en un tout cohérent” and as the “interruption de contour.” See André Lhote, Traités du paysage et de la figure (Grasset, 1979), 34, 55. See also Émile Bernard, “Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne et lettres inédites,” Mercure de France 70, nos. 247 and 248 (Oct. 1 and 16, 1907): 400: “Une fois je lui dis ‘Pour moi, le passage du ton a son origine dans le reflet; tout objet participe sur ses bords ombreux de son voisin.’ Il trouva ma définition si excellente qu’il me dit: ‘Vous voyez juste, vous irez loin.’”
On this effect, see John Willats, “The Rules of Representation,” in A Companion to Art Theory, ed. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (Blackwell, 2002), 419.
A recollection communicated to John Rewald cited in Rewald, Cézanne: Sa vie, 403: “penchant, inclinant, équilibrant les fruits comme il voulait que ce soit, se servant pour cela de pièces d’un sou et de deux sous.”
Roger Fry, Cézanne: A Study of His Development (Hogarth, 1927), 48.
Fry, Cézanne, 48.
Fry, Cézanne, 48.
Bernard, “Souvenirs,” 626: “Le défaut dont avait le plus à se plaindre Cézanne était celui de sa vue. ‘Je vois les plans se chevauchant, me disait-il, et parfois les lignes droites me paraissent tomber.’ Ces défauts, que je croyais des négligences volontaires, il les accusait comme des faiblesses et des vices de son optique.” For other instances of Cezanne’s use of the term, see Bernard, “Souvenirs,” 394–95, 397.
R. P. Rivière and Jacques Schnerb, “L’atelier de Cézanne,” La grande revue (Dec. 25, 1907): 813: “Cézanne ne faisait donc pas mine d’ignorer l’asymétrie de ses bouteilles, la perspective défectueuse de ses assiettes. Montrant une de ses aquarelles, il corrigeait de l’ongle une bouteille qui n’était pas verticale et il disait, comme en s’excusant: ‘Je suis un primitif, j’ai l’œil paresseux. Je me suis présenté deux fois à l’Ecole, mais je ne fais pas l’ensemble: une tête m’intéresse, je la fais trop grosse.’”
On Cézanne and the Provençal blague, see Edmond Jaloux, Les saisons littéraires 1896–1903 (Plon, 1942), 1:104. See also Ambroise Vollard, Paul Cézanne (Ambroise Vollard, 1914), 118.
See Joachin Gasquet, Cézanne (Bernheim-Jeune, 1921), 44: “Il n’aimait pas les primitifs.” See also 99.
Cezanne quoted in Bernard, “Souvenirs,” 614: “Je reste le primitif de la voie que j’ai découverte.” See also Émile Bernard, “Une conversation avec Cézanne,” Mercure de France 148, no. 551 (June 1, 1921): 376 (“Les primitifs … regardent le présent sans être gênés par un passé”); Gasquet, Cézanne, 70; and Shiff, Cézanne, 194.
Émile Bernard, “Paul Cézanne,” L’Occident, no. 32 (July 1904): 22: “Ce qu’il faut d’abord au peintre, selon Cézanne, c’est une optique personnelle.” This betrays Cezanne’s debt to his favorite novel, Manette Salomon of 1867 by the Goncourt brothers, in which the protagonist—the painter Naz Coriolis—is described as jealous of “son optique personnelle.” See Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, Manette Salomon (Paris, 1867), 2:265; and cat. 11. On Cezanne’s admiration for the book, see Vollard, Paul Cézanne, 176; Gasquet, Cézanne, 44, 66; Charles Camoin, “Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne,” L’amour de l’art 2, no. 1 (1921): 26; and Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 372.
For these examples, see cats. 2, 7, and 13.
See cat. 7.
Gasquet, Cézanne, 61: “Ses yeux de nouveau se reportaient sur les objets; lentement ils … s’en emparaient. Ils se fixaient sur un point, terribles. ‘Je ne puis les en arracher, me dit-il un jour … Ils sont tellement collés au point que je regarde qu’il me semble qu’ils vont saigner.’ Des minutes, un quart d’heure parfois, coulaient.”
Gasquet, Cézanne, 92: “‘La moindre défaillance d’œil fiche tout à bas … c’est terrible, mon œil se colle au tronc, à la motte. Je souffre à l’en arracher, tant quelque chose me retient.’ ‘Oui,’ je l’ai remarqué, ‘vous restez vingt minutes parfois entre deux coups de pinceau?’”
Anton Ehrenzweig, The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing: An Introduction to a Theory of Unconscious Perception (Routledge; Kegan Paul, 1953), 193–215.
Ehrenzweig, Artistic Vision, 193, 195, 203–5, 206–8, 211. Modern psychology confirms that gestalt processes do operate within our perception of objects, particularly in separating them from the background and in grouping their constituent elements into larger structures and wholes. See Mary A. Peterson, “Overlapping Partial Configurations in Object Memory: An Alternative Solution to Classic Problems in Perception and Recognition,” in Perception of Faces, Objects, and Scenes: Analytic and Holistic Processes, ed. Mary A. Peterson and Gillian Rhodes (Oxford University Press, 2003), 269–94.
Ehrenzweig, Artistic Vision, 199–200, 211.
Recent psychology shows that our “cyclopean” (or integrated) perception of the different views presented to the two eyes in such situations compensates for how these separate a continuous horizontal edge into two (or more) misaligned sections when it is viewed on the diagonal. See Hiroshi Ono and Nicholas J. Wade, “The Pursuit of Leonardo’s Constraint,” Perception 31 (2002): 83–102. The horizontal edge of a tabletop can also be made to appear disjointed simply by viewing it with the head tilted to one side. I am grateful to Rob Pepperell for this observation.
Ehrenzweig, Artistic Vision, 194, 200–201.
Ehrenzweig, Artistic Vision, 196.
Ehrenzweig, Artistic Vision, 197–99.
See Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods,” 113–69.
More complex changes, and an earlier, even more radical slant, are indicated by infrared examination.
See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt,” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson, trans. Michael B. Smith (Northwestern University Press, 1993), 65.
For the evidence that Cezanne did not change his standpoint when painting, see Paul Smith, “Cézanne’s ‘Primitive’ Perspective, or The ‘View from Everywhere,’” Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (Mar. 2013): 103–5.
Ehrenzweig, Artistic Vision, 195–96.
Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt,” 64.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Routledge, 1996), 67–69. See Sean Dorrance Kelly, “Seeing Things in Merleau-Ponty,” in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, ed. Taylor Carman and Mark B. N. Hansen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 90–92.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 68.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 68.
Merleau-Ponty’s argument is confirmed by the recent theory of predictive processing. This holds that we can preview a scene from different vantage points without actually having to move because we can correlate self-fulfilling predictions about what we would see if we were to do so with predictions about our movements. See Jacob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind (Oxford University Press, 2013), 75–85; and Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press, 2016), 111–38.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 109–18.
Jules Borély, “Cézanne à Aix,” L’art vivant, no. 37 (July 1, 1926): 493: “Voyez, de cet arbre à nous il y a un espace, une atmosphère, je vous l’accorde; mais c’est ensuite ce tronc, palpable, résistant, ce corps.” See also cat. 1.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology; Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt”; and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Northwestern University Press, 1968), 58, 128.
See A. David Milner and Melvyn A. Goodale, The Visual Brain in Action (Oxford University Press, 1995).
See Milner and Goodale, The Visual Brain, 88–92.
See Milner and Goodale, The Visual Brain, 110–13.
Dhanraj Vishwanath, “Visual Information in Surface and Depth Perception: Reconciling Pictures and Reality,” in Perception Beyond Inference: The Information Content of Visual Processing, ed. Liliana Albertazzi, Gert van Tonder, and Dhanraj Vishwanath (MIT Press, 2010), 204–6, 224–30.
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible, 249. See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in Merleau-Ponty, Aesthetics Reader, 124; and cat. 1.
Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” 126–27.
See cat. 2.
Cezanne quoted in Gasquet, Cézanne, 122: “On croit qu’un sucrier ça n’a pas une physionomie, une âme. Mais ça change tous les jours aussi. Il faut savoir les prendre, les amadouer, ces messieurs-là… . Ces verres, ces assiettes, ça se parle entre eux. Des confidences interminables. Les fleurs, j’y ai renoncé. Elles se fanent tout de suite. Les fruits sont plus fidèles. Ils aiment qu’on fasse leur portrait. Ils sont là comme à vous demander pardon de se décolorer… . Ils viennent à vous dans toutes leurs odeurs, vous parlent des champs qu’ils ont quittés, de la pluie qui les a nourris, des aurores qu’ils épiaient.”
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 Basket of Apples (FWN860 / 1926.252),” Feb. 2020, /files/a59a24c7-1bde-45ad-adae-74d24564b5c3/Cez_1926-252_Basket_tcr_FWN860.pdf.
See Kim Muir, “1926-252_Cezanne_Basket_ARP_SEM_202212,” Dec. 8, 2022, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
The ground composition was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX). For more detailed results and conditions used, see Muir, “1926-252_Cezanne_Basket_ARP_SEM_202212.”
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.
See note 59 above.
The presence of the pigments was inferred using the following methods: lead white (SEM/EDX, XRF), zinc white (SEM/EDX, XRF), ultramarine blue (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), cobalt blue (XRF, HSI), Prussian blue (FTIR), emerald green (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), viridian (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), yellow ochre (XRF, HSI), vermillion (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), and probable red organic colorant precipitated on a tin-based substrate (SEM/EDX, XRF). A barium-based painting material, possibly barium sulfate, was also used, likely as an extender (SEM/EDX, XRF). Analysis was carried out on selected areas and may not include all pigments present in the painting. See Giovanni Verri, “1926-252_Cezanne_Basket_ARP_XRF-HSI-FTIR_202406,” June 17, 2024, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago; and Muir, “1926-252_Cezanne_Basket_ARP_SEM_202212.”
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, 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), 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 index card dated Nov. 3, 1949, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
Alfred Jakstas, treatment report, Jan. 14, 1966, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
Allison Langley, treatment report, Feb. 2021, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
Warman in Rabinow, Cézanne to Picasso, 342.
See Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, eds., The Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings of Paul Cezanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, accessed June 1, 2025, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/, FWN 860 (hereafter FWN). (B-J 5538.)
FWN 860. (PC 5775 [5538.] Sent for exhibition 1904.)
FWN 860.
Warman in Rabinow, Cézanne to Picasso, 342.
Warman in Rabinow, Cézanne to Picasso, 342.
Warman in Rabinow, Cézanne to Picasso, 342.
Based on inscription on reverse, and until at least 1920. Warman in Rabinow, Cézanne to Picasso, 342; “A Private Collection in Germany That Contains Fourteen Examples of the Art of Paul Cezanne, a Great Modern, Who Already Is Placed with the Old Masters,” New York Times, July 6, 1913, 15; Charles Louis Borgmeyer, The Master Impressionists (Fine Arts, 1913), 230; Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Exposition Cézanne du 1^er au 18 décembre 1920 (Bernheim-Jeune, 1920), no. 28.
Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Exposition d’œuvres de grands maitres du dix-neuvième siècle (Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 1922), cat. 9, as Le panier de pommes, 1885, lent by Jos. Hessel.
Warman in Rabinow, Cézanne to Picasso, 342.

How to Cite

Entry by Paul Smith; Technical Report by Kim Muir with Giovanni Verri, “Cat. 10 The Basket of Apples, c. 1893,” 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/10.53269/9780865593251/15. © 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/.

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