Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit

Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit (c.1900), at the National Gallery of Art, belongs to the culminating phase of Cézanne's extraordinary still-life practice. Over four decades he had used the still life as a laboratory for his investigations into the relationship between sensation and structure, and by 1900 his arrangements of fruit, vessels, and drapery had achieved a density of analysis unequalled in European painting. The milk jug—a simple domestic vessel—was a recurring object in his still lifes, its cylindrical form presenting known formal problems that he could approach afresh in each new arrangement, exploring how the same object could be painted differently in different contexts and light conditions.

The milk jug's cylindrical form is rendered through Cézanne's signature passage of modulated colour—planes of related hues that shift imperceptibly from warm to cool to suggest roundness without conventional shading. The fruit surrounding it is similarly constructed, each apple or pear built from a mosaic of carefully considered colour touches. The drapery beneath and behind is organised into large planes that create compositional structure for the arrangement.