Stillleben mit Äpfeln

In 1895 the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard gave Cezanne his first solo exhibition. Cezanne was 56 and living mostly in Aix-en-Provence, and he stayed away from it. Younger painters went instead, and the show turned him from a rumour among them into a figure they argued about for the next decade. This still life belongs to the three years just after, 1895 to 1898, when he was working the same few props over and over in the studio, tilting the tabletop and setting fruit where real fruit would not stay. In 1922 the New York collector Lillie P. Bliss bought it at auction for 21,000 dollars, the highest price of that sale. She was one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art, and her will made it a picture the museum is not permitted to sell.