Fruits, napkin and milk box

Fruits, Napkin and Milk Box from 1880, at the Musée de l'Orangerie, incorporates a carton or box as an unusual geometric element alongside organic fruits and the soft fold of a napkin. Cézanne consistently introduced objects with different formal qualities into his arrangements — hard-edged and soft, geometric and organic, smooth and textured — to generate the formal tensions that drove his investigations. The white napkin appears throughout his still lifes as a foil for fruit, its folds creating angular geometry that contrasts with the rounded apples and oranges. The Orangerie's collection provides excellent context for this work alongside the many other Cézannes in the museum.

The milk box or carton introduces a man-made, rectilinear object among the natural forms — its flat surfaces and right angles in deliberate contrast to the spherical fruits and the crumpled softness of the napkin. Cézanne renders each surface differently, the box's planarity contrasting with the rounded modeling of the fruit.