Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples

Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples from 1877, at the Metropolitan Museum, assembles objects of different scale, form, and material into a typical early Cézanne arrangement. The jar and cup are ceramic vessels of different size — the jar taller and rounder, the cup shorter and cylindrical — placed alongside the inevitable apples that appear in the majority of his still lifes. By 1877 Cézanne was developing his mature approach to the still life with increasing confidence, moving away from the palette knife technique of his earlier period toward the directional brush stroke that would become his signature.

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.