Bottle and Fruits (Bouteille et fruits)

Bottle and Fruits (1890) at the Barnes Foundation exemplifies Cézanne's mature still-life method applied to a combination of vessel and fruit—the two archetypal elements of his still-life vocabulary. The bottle's cylindrical geometry and the apples' spherical forms offered a structural dialogue between different three-dimensional types. By 1890 Cézanne was the unacknowledged center of a small but devoted group of admirers including Emile Bernard who visited him in Aix, and his still-life method was already influencing younger artists who would visit or correspond with him.

The bottle's cylindrical form is built through modulated warm-to-cool color passages describing its curved surface in rotation. Fruit spheres are developed through the same systematic warm-cool alternation. The tablecloth provides opportunities for Cézanne's characteristic treatment of folded fabric—each crease analyzed as a structural plane.