{"id":181162,"date":"2026-08-08T14:32:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/?post_type=product&p=181162"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:33:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:33:30","slug":"milk-can-and-apples","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/paul-cezanne\/milk-can-and-apples\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul C\u00e9zanne \u2013 Milk Can and Apples"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Milk Can and Apples \u2013 the catalogue knows which room it was painted in<\/h2>\n

At the left stands a tall cylindrical milk vessel, blue-grey, with a flat lid and a dark seam down its side. The centre is held by a white napkin, folded into sharp edges that do not fall but stand upright. Apples are spread across the dark brown table \u2013 red, orange-red, green and yellow-green \u2013 with a pear lying at the front left and a second, larger and yellow-orange, at the right. The canvas measures 50 \u00d7 61 cm, was made between 1879 and 1880 and is held by the Museum of Modern Art<\/strong> in New York (the William S. Paley Collection). Here the painter\u2019s hand takes it over: a hand-painted painting on canvas<\/strong>, oil on canvas.<\/p>\n

An address written into the catalogue<\/h3>\n

For this canvas the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 fills in a field that stays empty for most entries: the studio. The address recorded is 2, place de la Pr\u00e9fecture, Melun<\/strong>. The entry therefore says not only when the work was made but in which room the table of fruit stood. And the address agrees with the date: C\u00e9zanne was working at Melun in exactly those years, so the dating and the room confirm one another \u2013 which is a rarity, because with this painter the sources more often diverge than coincide.<\/p>\n

The wallpaper and the chest<\/h3>\n

Among the motifs the catalogue lists, besides the fruit and the napkin, two things that surprise in a still life: a floral wallpaper<\/strong> and a wooden chest. The wallpaper really is visible on the canvas \u2013 pale outlines of leaves and blossoms run across the blue-green wall, painted so lightly that you notice them only once you look for them. Along the bottom edge, meanwhile, runs a band of vivid red, yellow, green and blue patches. What exactly that band is the catalogue does not say; it records only that a wooden chest was among the furniture of the room. In short: the background of this still life is not invented, it is the furnishing of a rented room.<\/p>\n

The napkin that stands like paper<\/h3>\n

The strangest object on the canvas is the napkin. C\u00e9zanne did not paint it as cloth falls, but as though it were folded paper: the peaks are sharp, the faces flat, the shadows between them cleanly cut. It is this hardness that makes it the third support of the work, alongside the vessel and the table. A milk vessel of a different shape you will also meet in Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit<\/a>, and the apples in this arrangement in The Basket of Apples<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The work is built on three dark bands \u2013 the wall, the table and the shadow beneath the fruit \u2013 between which only the napkin and the fruit shine. It therefore carries weaker light well and does not demand a strong wall: it works in a kitchen, a dining room or a caf\u00e9. The fifteen sizes run from 50 \u00d7 41 cm to 180 \u00d7 148 cm; intermediate measurements we stretch to custom size<\/strong> on the stretcher frame, and how it will look framed is shown by our 3D rendering application<\/strong>. If you want a second table to go with this one, among our art paintings on canvas<\/strong> it is Fruit and a Jug on a Table<\/a>.<\/p>\n