The painting by Paul Cezanne "Still Life with Drapery", created in 1892-1894, emphasizes the peculiarities of the impressionistic manner of the author. Let's compare this work with the sketch and enjoy the artist’s skill.
Detailed description of the painting
The work was completed in 1892-1894. The picture shows two plates with oranges and apples, placed on two crumpled (most recently) napkins (or tablecloths). The author supplemented the canvas with a white earthenware jug painted with flowers. It is this jug that appears in many of the artist's still lifes, which is probably why he was written out in Still Life with Drapery, as always, with love and care.
The jug, like all white on the canvas, shines with cleanliness and gives a feeling of coolness (gray-blue shades and folds of napkins), emphasizing the bright yellow-orange warmth of the fruit and the drapery material, which serves as the left background of the picture and is a dense flowing fabric, most likely silk with a floral pattern.
Dark color is present only on the background only in the most hidden corners of matter on the canvas on the left and an incomprehensible background on the right. There is a lot of white, but it collects warm fruit shades and carries a feeling of not only purity and light, but of summer and the joy of being. The author writes fruit with obvious pleasure: yellowish and greenish shades of apples complement and soften the oranges.
Features of the canvas and style of the author
Despite the lively tenderness, the fruits in "Still Life with Drapery", as always with Cezanne, are very tangible, have weight and density. A jug stands firmly on the table, unlike plates, designed, like the right background, to lead the viewer away from reality and be perplexed. Is the right edge of the table raised or not? Will the plates slide down with such an inclination on the viewer or not? Is there anything in a heavy-looking jug?
The art critic A. Dubeshko believes that the author commits a violation in the future specifically as a sign of rejection of well-known academic still lifes, using his view of still life objects from different angles. Specialists in painting note an extraordinary sense of balance of forms and colors in the work, which makes it beautiful, integral and stable in our material world.
Study for the painting and the canvas itself
It is interesting to compare the unfinished sketch for the painting and the painting itself. On the sketch (stored in the Museum of the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania, USA, dated 1892-1894) Cezanne is completely realistic, somewhere even boring: everything is simple and ordinary, the most interesting is the drapery in the background. And the picture is a real holiday: the wealth of fruits on plates, flowers in ornaments and light shades - everything is momentary and beautiful. On the canvas there is everything that distinguishes the paintings of the Impressionists, whose follower was Paul Cezanne.