Fruits et une cruche sur une table

In the early 1890s there was almost nowhere in Paris to see a Cézanne. He had not shown with the Impressionists since 1877 and had got into the Salon only once, in 1882. Painters who wanted to look went to Julien Tanguy's colour shop in the rue Clauzel and asked to see what was stacked in the back room. This still life belongs to those years, when Cézanne was working mostly in Provence. It is a small canvas, about 40 centimetres across, with fruit and a jug on a table whose top tilts up towards the viewer. He set out that arrangement again and again, shifting the table, the cloth and each piece of fruit. Tanguy died in 1894 and his stock went under the hammer. The year after, the dealer Ambroise Vollard gave Cézanne, then 56, his first one-man show.