Apples and biscuits

Apples and Biscuits from 1879, at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, belongs to Cézanne's intensive development of the still life as his primary laboratory for formal investigation. The Orangerie holds this alongside important holdings of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting assembled by Paul Guillaume. By 1879 Cézanne had separated himself from the Paris Impressionist group and was working in Aix-en-Provence, developing the systematic investigation of form and color in the still life that would influence every subsequent generation of painters.

The careful arrangement of apples alongside flat biscuits shows Cézanne testing different formal types against each other — round versus flat, soft versus crisp. Each object is modeled through multiple overlapping strokes of color that build up the surface with geological patience.