Boîte à lait, carafe et bol

Boîte à lait, carafe et bol (Milk Can, Carafe, and Bowl) in the Hermitage Museum is among the most intimate of Cézanne's still-life arrangements — everyday kitchen objects placed on a table and examined with the same intensity he brought to Mont Sainte-Victoire. The milk can, the glass carafe, and the ceramic bowl present contrasting material qualities — metal, glass, and glazed clay — that allowed him to explore the relationships between different surfaces and their responses to light. Painted around 1879, the canvas belongs to his most productive period of still-life investigation.

Each object is rendered through Cézanne's developing method of constructing form through parallel planes of color — the rounded carafe and bowl built up with faceted strokes that suggest volume through the systematic modulation of tone and hue. The white cloth beneath the objects is painted with particular sophistication, its folds analyzed through subtle gradations of grey and cream.