Dahlias in a Delft vase

In 1873 Cézanne was living at Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, and painting still lifes in the house of Doctor Paul Gachet, a physician and collector who lived there. The Cézanne scholar Pavel Machotka believed the doctor set up this arrangement, and the big blue-and-white Delft vase was his. That may explain why the picture looks more conventional than most of Cézanne's work, giving the showy vase as much attention as the flowers. The brushwork is Cézanne's own. White, mauve, yellow and orange dahlias are packed together in thick, firm strokes. Gachet, an amateur painter himself, later made his own copy of the canvas. The original left his house and passed through the Paris dealers Bernheim-Jeune to the banker Isaac de Camondo, whose bequest of 1911 brought it into the Louvre, where it went on show in 1914.