Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug

Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug from 1877, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, places three objects of different form and material in close relation: a flask, a drinking glass, and a ceramic jug. The Guggenheim's Cézanne, acquired through the museum's extensive collection of early modernism, is a significant holding in an institution that also preserves major Picassos and Braques — artists who acknowledged Cézanne as their primary pictorial ancestor. The three objects of different translucency, opacity, and form give Cézanne three fundamentally different formal problems to solve within a single small canvas.

The contrast between the transparent glass, the semi-transparent flask, and the opaque ceramic jug gives Cézanne three different optical problems in close proximity — each object requiring different treatment of light, reflection, and surface modulation within his systematic method.