Nature morte, fleurs dans un vase

Paul Cézanne's Nature morte, fleurs dans un vase (Still Life, Flowers in a Vase, 1885) belongs to his occasional flower painting alongside his more characteristic fruit and kitchen still lifes. Cézanne's flower paintings are relatively rare compared to his extensive fruit and landscape production, but they demonstrate the same systematic chromatic and compositional investigation. The flowers in a vase subject has the longest history in European still life, and Cézanne's contribution subverts the tradition's decorative conventions in favor of formal analysis.

Cézanne renders the flower arrangement through his characteristic constructive approach: each flower built through accumulated directional strokes that convey both its specific form and color, the vase described through the geometric clarity of its cylindrical or spherical form, the table surface providing the horizontal compositional base. His palette for the flower subject is more chromatically varied than his fruit paintings — flowers allow the investigation of a wider range of pure colors in relationships.