The Plate of Apples
c. 1877
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
45.8 × 54.7 cm (18 1/8 × 21 1/2 in.); Framed: 71.8 × 82.6 × 10.2 cm (28 1/4 × 32 1/2 × 4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
65811
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The lozenge-shaped pattern of the wallpaper identifies the setting for this still life as the Paris apartment where Paul Cezanne and his family lived between 1875 and 1879. Here, the artist disrupted expectations for painting at the time by tipping the tabletop and plate forward toward the viewer and constructing a table with edges that don’t quite align. These disorienting details are complemented by the heavy, almost sculptural forms he created by using a pointed tool—possibly the end of his b...
About the Artist
Paul Cezanne · 1839–1906
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), born in Aix-en-Provence to a prosperous banker father, Louis-Auguste, and mother Anne-Elisabeth-Honorine Aubert, grew up in a bourgeois family that later acquired the Jas de Bouffan estate, where he painted his earliest murals. As a youth, he formed the inseparable trio "Les Trois Inséparables" with schoolmates Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. Despite his father's wishes ...