Still Life with Plaster Cupid, Paul Cézanne

Still Life with Plaster Cupid, Paul Cézanne (1894)

This work depicts a still life set up in Paul Cézanne's studio, including a plaster cast of a small 17th-century sculpture surrounded by fruit and vegetables. A few canvases are propped up against the wall. Cézanne used this seemingly simple arrangement to create one of his most complex and disorientating paintings. The spatial arrangement of the studio is difficult to grasp and the impression of depth is unsettling. The green apple in the far corner seems too large and the floor itself appears tilted. The blue drapery in the painting propped against the wall on the left blends with the hem of the fabric on the table. The position of the sprouting onion blurs the distinction between the ‘real’ fruits and vegetables on the table and the ones depicted in the canvas.

This work challenged the traditional view that still life was a limited and unadventurous genre. Rather than creating straightforward representations, Cézanne used still life to liberate himself from conventional ways of seeing.