Dish of Apples

Dish of Apples from around 1876, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is one of the earliest works by Cézanne in the Metropolitan's extensive collection of European painting. The Met acquired Cézanne through a combination of purchases and bequests, building one of the finest concentrations of his work in America. A dish of apples was a motif with precedents in French still-life painting from Chardin onward, and Cézanne's conscious engagement with this tradition is one reason he persisted with the same objects across decades.

The shallow dish creates a concave form that gathers the apples into a cluster — the dish's rim a circular element that groups the individual fruits into a collective arrangement. Cézanne's early technique here is somewhat freer and less structured than his mature method, with more visible Impressionist influence.