Description
Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit – the Cézanne that belonged to Monet
A tall, narrow, faceted milk jug with a flowering sprig, a stemmed glass behind it, and in front a white oval dish of peaches and apples from which a few fruits escape onto the table. The canvas is small, measuring 45.8 × 54.9 cm, was made around 1900 and is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington (acc. 1972.9.5, gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman). With us the painter’s hand takes it over: a hand-painted painting on canvas, oil on canvas, stretched over a solid stretcher frame.
A work that hung at Giverny
Among the owners of this canvas the catalogue records Claude Monet and his house at Giverny. The date – February 1902 – the catalogue prints with a question mark, that is, as probable rather than proven; the owner’s name, by contrast, stands without qualification. Monet collected work by Cézanne and hung it in his own rooms, and this small table of fruit was one of those. The route continued through Paris galleries to the Harrimans in New York, and from there in 1972 to Washington.
A table with no cloth
In Cézanne something almost always hangs over the edge of the table: a tablecloth, a drape, a rag. Here there is nothing at all. The fruit lies straight on bare ochre wood, a drawer front with a round wooden knob shows along the bottom, and a raised edge rail runs down the right. The painter has taken away the surface that fabric usually softens for him, and set the colour of the fruit directly onto the timber.
A background that is a room, not a backdrop
Behind run the vertical boards of wall panelling, and along the right edge the dark mass of a curtain gathers. The catalogue connects the scene with Cézanne’s apartment and working rooms in the rue Boulégon in Aix. So it is not staged in a void: the objects stand in the corner of a real room, with real wood, real panelling and a real shadow behind them.
Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit is a warm painting – ochre, peach orange, a single red apple – and because the original is small, with us it opens up large for the first time. The fifteen sizes run from 50 × 42 cm to 180 × 151 cm, and in-between measurements we stretch to custom size. How it will look framed is shown by our 3D preview application. Among our art paintings on canvas it sits well with The Peppermint Bottle, The Kitchen Table and Still Life with a Dessert.
- Subject: Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit, Paul Cézanne, about 1900, National Gallery of Art, Washington (1972.9.5)
- Technique: hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 15 dimensions, custom size on request
- Of note: the recorded owners include Claude Monet, who kept the canvas at Giverny
