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Description: PAUL CEZANNE
1839-1906
PICHET ET FRUITS SUR UNE TABLE
Oil on paper laid down on panel
16 1/2 by 28 1/2 in. 41.9 by 72.4 cm.
Painted circa 1893-94.
Provenance
Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Cornelis Hoogendijk, Amsterdam (acquired from the above before 1900)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (on deposit)
Paul Rosenberg, Paris (acquired from the Estate of Cornelis Hoogendijk on May 27, 1920)
Dr. Albert C. Barnes, Merion, Pennsylvania (acquired from the above on July 8, 1920)
Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
The Lefevre Gallery (Alex. Reid & Lefevre), London (acquired from the above on March 19, 1936)
Paul Rosenberg, Paris (acquired from the above in March 1936)
Mrs. Chester A. Beatty, London (by 1936)
Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York
Laurance S. Rockefeller, New York (acquired from the above in April 1955)
Eugene V. Thaw & Co., New York
Jaime Ortiz-Patino, Geneva (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 9, 1989, lot 7)
Private Collection, Osaka
Acquired from the above
Exhibited
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Moderne Kunst Kring, 1911
New York, Bignou Gallery, Paul CEzanne, 1936, no. 18 (as dating from 1886-87)
London, Wildenstein & Co., Hommage to Paul CEzanne, 1939, no. 34
Paris, Paul Rosenberg & Cie., CEzanne, 1939, no. 21 (as dating from 1887)
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Paintings from Private Collections, 25th Anniversary Exhibition, 1955, no. 15
New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Masterpieces Recalled, 1957, no. 17
Literature
Harold van Doren, "Some Little Known CEzannes," The Touchstone, New York, December 1920, illustrated p. 184
Georges Rivi 3/16re, Le Ma 15/16tre Paul CEzanne, Paris, 1923, listed p. 221 (titled Nature Morte and as dating from 1896)
Lionello Venturi, CEzanne, son art-son oeuvre, vol. 1, Paris, 1936, no. 499, catalogued p. 172; vol. 2, no. 499, illustrated pl. 154 (as dating from circa 1885-87)
Adrien Bagarry, "Le centenaire de CEzanne," La Renaissance, Paris, March 1939, illustrated p. 5
Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia, The Art of CEzanne, Merion, Pennsylvania, 1939, no. 123, listed p. 29
AndrE Leclerc, CEzanne, New York, 1948, illustrated p. 10
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., "Paintings from Private Collections," Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Summer 1955, no. 15, listed p. 30; illustrated p. 32 (as dating from circa 1885-87)
Alfonso Gatto and Sandra Orienti, L'Opera completa di CEzanne, Milan, 1970, no. 480, illustrated p. 108 (as dating from circa 1885-87)
Douglas Cooper, Alex. Reid and Lefevre, 1926-1976, London, 1976, illustrated
p. 79
John Rewald, CEzanne, A Biography, New York, 1986, illustrated p. 180
Howard Greenfield, The Devil and Dr. Barnes: Portrait of an American Collector, New York, 1987, discussed p. 69
John Rewald, CEzanne and America, Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics, 1891-1921, London and Princeton, 1989, fig. 131, illustrated p. 274 and on the cover
Herbert Henkels, "CEzanne en Van Gogh in het Rijksmuseum voor Moderne Kunst in Amsterdam: De collectie van Cornelis Hoogendijk," Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1993, fig. 165, illustrated p. 262
Isabelle Cahn, "The 1890s," CEzanne (exhibition catalogue), Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995-96, fig. 1, illustrated p. 384
John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul CEzanne, A Catalogue RaisonnE, vol. 1, New York, 1996, no. 742, catalogued pp. 456-57; vol. 2, no. 742, illustrated p. 255
From his earliest years as a painter, CEzanne manifested a great interest in still-life, a subject of only peripheral importance to his contemporaries, Pissarro, Sisley, Monet and Renoir. More clearly, perhaps, than in any other subject it is possible to trace the development of CEzanne's style in his still-lifes, since he could create and control the compositions himself, arranging the elements in ways that provided an infinite variety of formal problems to be solved on the canvas. As noted by Emile Bernard: "He needed time in order to move forward, and he found it in the presence of skulls, green fruit or paper flowers. It was in this genre that he best showed what he was capable of" (Emile Bernard, "Souvenirs sur Paul CEzanne,"D.M. Doran (ed.), Conversations avec CEzanne, Paris, 1978, p. 79). The still-lifes of the early 1880s were mostly solid and compact, the spatial relationships of the objects depicted conveyed in a dense network of thickly-painted "constructive strokes," but by the latter part of the decade he began to abandon strict frontality in favor of more complex spatial arrangements, rivalling the baroque compositions of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings.
Late in the artist's life, the young painter Louis le Bail witnessed how CEzanne composed a still-life consisting of a napkin, a glass of red wine and some peaches: "The cloth was very slightly draped upon the table, with innate taste. Then CEzanne arranged the fruits, contrasting the tones one against the other, making the complementaries vibrate, the greens against the reds, the yellows against the blues, tipping, turning, balancing the fruits as he wanted them to be, using coins of one or two sous for the purpose. He brought to this task the greatest care and many precautions; one guessed that it was a feast for the eye to him." When he had finished, CEzanne explained to his young colleague, "The main thing is the modeling; one should not even say modeling, but modulating" (quoted in John Rewald, CEzanne, A Biography, New York, 1986, p. 288).
CEzanne used the earthenware jug which dominates the present composition in six other canvases (Rewald nos. 737-39, 741, 743 and 744). Also familiar from its appearances in a number of still-lifes of the 1880's and 1890's (Rewald nos. 769-72) is the patterned blue drapery. In each canvas, however, CEzanne viewed the materials at his disposal as if for the first time, arranging them in unexpected ways, changing proportions and establishing formal and spatial relationships that result in compositions of unprecedented variety and interest. In Pichet et fruits (Rewald no. 744, see fig. 1) for example, CEzanne focused exclusively on the objects on the table, eliminating all references to the room in which the table stands. In Nature morte 1/2 la cruche (Rewald no. 773) he raised the table top higher in the composition and enriched the display of fruit with a billowing drapery, although the colored brushstrokes are applied as sparingly as touches of color in many of the watercolors, allowing the primed canvas to shine through. Different approaches were adopted in Pichet de gr 3/16s (Rewald no. 743) and Rideau, cruchon et compotier (Rewald no. 739, see fig. 2). The grandeur and opulence of the former contrasts with the spatial complexity of the latter, in which the table top is located within the confines of the studio.
The present work, Pichet et fruits sur une table, differs markedly from the other compositions centered on the earthenware jug, both in format and in the character of the paint surface itself. One of the most lyrical of the great still-lifes of the early 1890's, the relatively elongated format of the painting allowed CEzanne to space out the jug, plate and fruit horizontally. There is no white fabric on the table top and the blue patterned drapery, rather than establishing a forceful rhythm for the entire composition as it does in La bouteille de menthe, 1893-95 (Rewald no. 772, see fig. 3), draws attention to the left portion of the canvas. It seems to weigh down the left edge of the table, warping it and distorting the perspective. Rather than suggesting the confines of a room, the subtly modulated background which ranges in hue from soft pinks and mauves to cooler blues and greens, opens up the space, so much that the dish of fruit behind the jug seems to levitate.
In Nature morte 1/2 la cruche the primed canvas functions as the sheet of paper in a watercolor, creating breathing space for the forms established by widely dispersed dabs of color. In the present work, CEzanne painted in oil on paper that was then laid down on panel. Lacking the texture of canvas, the paper received the integument of brush strokes without resistance, imparting to the composition a grace and ease that is rare in CEzanne's oeuvre. Another masterpiece by CEzanne, in which he successfully explored the medium of oil on paper laid down on panel is the Norton Simon Museum's Vase de tulipes of 1890-92 (see fig. 4).
CEzanne's still-lifes have long been recognized as among his greatest achievements, the works in which can be seen most clearly the innovations that led to the stylistic developments of early twentieth-century art. Discussing CEzanne's still-lifes of the 1880's, Roger Fry noted that CEzanne, "is distinguished among artists of the highest rank by the fact that he devoted so large a part of his time to this class of picture, that he achieved in still-life the expression of the most exalted feelings and the deepest intuitions of his nature. Rembrandt alone, and only in the rarest examples, or in accessories, can be compared to him in this respect. For one cannot deny that CEzanne gave a new character to his still-lifes. Nothing else but still-life allowed him sufficient calm and leisure, and admitted all the delays which were necessary to him for plumbing the depths of his idea. But there, before the still-life, put together not with too ephemeral flowers, but with onions, apples, or other robust and long-enduring fruits, he could pursue till it was exhausted his probing analysis of the chromatic whole. But through the bewildering labyrinth of this analysis he held always like Ariadne's thread, the notion that the changes of color correspond to movements of planes. He sought always to trace this correspondence throughout all the diverse modifications which changes of local color introduced into the observed resultant... it is hard to exaggerate their [still-life's] importance in the expression of CEzanne's genius or the necessity of studying them for its comprehension, because it is in them that he appears to have established his principles of design and theories of form" (Roger Fry, CEzanne: A Study of his Development, Chicago, 1927, pp. 37 and 50).