Glass and Apples

Cezanne once said he wanted to astonish Paris with an apple, and small pictures like this one are how he meant to do it. Around 1879 he painted a set of 11 still lifes, each arranged on a chest in front of pale, bluish flowered wallpaper, and this glass with its scatter of apples belongs to that group. Nothing here is set out to charm the eye. The fruit sits heavy and round at the very front of the picture, close to us, each apple built up from patches of red, yellow and green until it feels as solid as a stone. He worked slowly, and fruit was patient in a way people were not, holding its pose for weeks while he searched for the exact weight and place of every form. Rudolf Staechelin, whose collection still hangs in Basel, bought the painting in 1918.