Still Life with Cherries

By 1890 Cézanne had spent decades pushing oil paint into something almost architectural, building fruit and cloth out of small blocks of colour. In his last years he kept reaching instead for watercolour, and this modest sheet shows what he found in it. He lets the white of the paper do the work of light, laying thin washes over a cup and a plate of cherries on a bare table and leaving whole areas almost untouched. The pencil drawing beneath still shows through the colour. It is one of the very few paintings by Cézanne to be found anywhere in Italy.