Still Life with Apples and a Glass of Wine

This 1877 Philadelphia Museum canvas of apples and a glass of wine is a significant early example of Cézanne's still life investigations, painted during the Impressionist period when he was exhibiting with the group but already developing his distinctive approach. The arrangement of fruit with a wine glass introduces the reflective, transparent vessel as a formal challenge alongside the opaque spherical apples. The work shows him moving away from the dark, heavily worked surfaces of his early career toward the lighter, more analytical approach of his mature years. The tilted, unstable table surface — already beginning to defy conventional perspective — is characteristic.

The glass is rendered with transparent washes suggesting its reflective surface, contrasting with the opaque painted apples. Cézanne's brushwork is varied and exploratory — some passages have the freshness of direct Impressionist observation, others show his beginning tendency to build form through systematic color modulation.