Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples

Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples from 1877, at the Metropolitan Museum, shows Cézanne in the full swing of his systematic still-life development. By this date he had abandoned the palette knife applications of his early work and was building his compositions entirely through the directional brushstroke that would become his technical signature. The Metropolitan's collection of works from this period allows comparison with his contemporaries: while Renoir was painting the Moulin de la Galette and Monet was pursuing his river scenes, Cézanne was alone in his Aix studio setting up arrangements of jars and cups and apples. The jar and cup posed specific formal problems — the jar's tall, rounded form required different treatment from the cup's cylindrical geometry, and the apples introduced the warm organic tones that he used to warm the cooler ceramic surfaces. His 1877 still lifes represent the beginning of the systematic color-plane approach that would define his mature achievement, distinguishing him from both the academic tradition he had been trained in and the Impressionist circle he had briefly joined.

The variety of vessel forms — jar, cup — alongside organic fruit creates the typical Cézannian formal counterpoint between geometric volumes. The ceramic surfaces are rendered with cooler, more uniform strokes than the warmer, more varied treatment of the fruit.