Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses

Flowering plants were unusual subjects for Cézanne. His slow working process risked outlasting the blooms. Here, the fragile plant joins more durable apples and pottery. Claude Monet, himself an enthusiastic gardener, once owned the painting.

Pale pink flowers rise above dark leaves. The fragile plant brought changing natural material into a slow painting process.

Broad leaves partly conceal the pale pot. Its rounded form gives the spreading plant a stable base.

The white cloth forms angular folds. Its pale surface reveals how Cézanne builds volume through small changes of colour.

Yellow and red apples overlap on the cloth. Their round forms sit against the fabric’s sharper folds.

More apples lie near the table’s back edge. Separate groups of fruit connect nearer and more distant parts of the still life.

Monet’s ownership records one painter’s interest in another’s work. The still life preserves familiar objects alongside a sustained investigation of relationships between colour, form and depth.