Life With Apples,\" Ca. 1893-94. The Original

¶ … Life with Apples," ca. 1893-94. The original work is an oil on canvas, hung in the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. Cezanne painted many still lifes, and many with apples, but this is one of his most interesting and detailed looks at common, everyday objects.

Paul Cezanne was born in 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, a small town about fifteen miles north of Marseilles. His family was prosperous, and the boy was well educated. He first studied law, but also began to take lessons at the Drawing Academy of Aix, and found he enjoyed art much more than the law. By 1861, his father allowed him to go to Paris to continue his art studies, and his career as an artist was born. Even his art teacher did not encourage his interest in supporting himself as an artist. He returned for a time to his hometown to work in his father's bank, but continued painting. By 1862, he was back in Paris, and he began to show some of his work (Eitner 422). He struggled for many years before his work began to be accepted, shown, and sold, and he lived off an allowance from his father for many years. His work matured as he grew older, and he became known as a master of the landscape, still life, and portrait. He also began to sell his work, and by the time he died in 1906, he had a strong following and had amassed a large body of work.

When he first began painting, he considered himself a realist, but later, most experts classified him as an Impressionist, and many other Impressionist painters influenced his work, including Pissaro and Renoir. Art historian Lorenz Eitner notes, "During the years of his involvement with Impressionism Cezanne chose his motifs mainly from the concrete, outer reality of landscape, still-life, and portrait" (Eitner 428). However, by the 1880s, the artist had moved away from Impressionism to a type of Realism or more Classical form of painting. In fact, many experts believe he literally invented a new type of painting. Writer Meyer Shapiro writes, "To accomplish this fusion of nature and self, Cezanne had to create a new method of painting. [ ... ] strokes of high-keyed color which in the Impressionist paintings dissolved objects into atmosphere and sunlight, forming a crust of twinkling points, Cezanne applied to the building of solid forms" (Schapiro 10). Thus, Cezanne is difficult to pin down to one particular art form or style. His work is a blend of several styles, and can be considered a style of its own.

This particular painting is a stunning example of Cezanne's work at the pinnacle of his still-life period. The apples, bottle, and vase were common elements in several of his paintings, and they show the detail and realism that filled this time in his career. As expert Shapiro notes, "The apple looks solid, weighty, and round as it would feel to a blind man" (Schapiro 10). The items appear in a jumble on the table, but there is organization to their seeming chaos. The apples rolling on the table tie the painting together, and the jug, bottle, and vase all harmonize with the rich reds and yellows of the apples. There is a feeling of classic still life in this painting, because of the minute details and the arrangement of the pieces. Writer Eitner continues, "Cezanne's arrangements of edibles and kitchen crockery recall seventeenth century Dutch and eighteenth-century French still-life traditions, but differ from them in that they neither reflect actual domestic life nor spell any moral or social message" (Eitner 432). As the Web site for the Getty Museum notes about the work, "He arranged his still lifes so that everything locked together. Edges of objects run into each other; for example, a black arabesque seemingly escapes from the blue cloth to capture an apple in the center" (Getty Museum). Each detail seems casual, but is instead well placed to bring form and balance to the whole. The detail in the cloths, rattan, ceramic pot, and the apples themselves makes the painting seem extremely real and life like. This shows how Cezanne's work matured the longer he painted, as his early works were more nightmarish and less realistic.

The colors blend together and are pleasing to the eye, which makes the viewer want to look at the work more closely and discover more of the details. It is quite clear that the artist understood the nuances of lighting and shading, because the shadows and highlighting in the work add to the depth and the reality. The details of this work are what first capture the viewer's eye, and it is clear that Cezanne had a very clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish with this piece. He wanted it to be as realistic as possible -- to literally jump off the canvas and become real to the viewer, and he accomplishes that with his attention to the minutest of details and the careful positioning of the items on the table. Each one brings something to the painting, while illustration the common items of an artist's home at the time.