One of the things you anticipate seeing when you enter an art gallery is paintings of fruit dishes. But, unfortunately, a lot of people find them dull, thinking they’re only fruit bowls, after all.
But you should look at the Paul Cézanne still life paintings while you go through these paintings. When this French artist was alive, still-life paintings were seen as inferior works of art unworthy of genuine acclaim.
However, Cézanne painted several of them, and the outcome was more than just a bowl of fruit; it was a test of the entire idea of art that would alter the course of history.
Cézanne’s Theme
It has been said that post-impressionist artist Paul Cezanne created his own aesthetic, which has been compared to architecture or sculpture. However, this demonstrates how meticulously analytical Cézanne was in his painting, applying each brushstroke deliberately and systematically to affect the entire composition’s structural integrity.
He began deconstructing things into their most basic forms. Around the same time, he began simplifying colors from intricate gradients so they could be placed close to one another rather than blended.
To finally depart from the traditional perspective, he allowed it to be based more on the interactions between things than on a single point. All of this gave the sense that he was looking at something simultaneously from several angles.
Famous still-life paintings by Cezanne
Cézanne was intrigued by optics. He attempted to reduce naturally existing shapes to their rudimentary geometric components, such as the cube, sphere, and cone. He built up surfaces using color layers and highlighted his shapes with lines. He became a master of perspective due to his extensive study of geometry in painting. Below there are introduced some of the best Paul Cezanne drawings.
Still Life with Apples
The booze bottle, the ginger pot, and the apples are seen in this Paul Cezanne drawing. The artist included these artifacts in the painting so that he could experiment with color, form, and lighting to improve the appeal of the whole piece.
Paul placed all the elements in this picture in a way that makes them all interlock. The artist employed a mix of warm and cold hues to convey his concepts and give the painting a purpose. Using this method, he showed how still life, the lowest kind of painting, could be safely used to depict the illusion of light and space.
According to the artist, painting directly from nature is a means of realizing one’s feelings rather than simply reproducing the subject. Paul never attempted to create an illusion; instead, he always attracted attention to the excellence of the paint he applied to the canvas.
The Basket of Apples
Still Life with Basket of Apples – Paul Cezanne
Famous painter Cézanne once said that art is not a copy of nature but rather a harmony directly adjacent to nature. In his search for elemental form and arrangement, he came to understand that an artist is not required to depict actual objects in actual space. As a result, one of his distinctive tilting tables, an impossibly rectangular shape devoid of correct angles, may be found in The Basket of Apples.
The tablecloth’s solid and sculptural folds and the bottle’s slab-like base appear to support the apple basket as it protrudes from the table. A more realistic still life could never have this composition’s depth and dynamic because of the dense modeling, firm brushstrokes, and radiant colors. This post-impressionist artist, Paul Cezanne’s life drawing was one of his few signed paintings.
Apples and Oranges
Apples And Oranges – Paul Cezanne
Around 1899, painter Cézanne created the still life oil painting Apples and Oranges. It is one of the French artist’s last works before passing away. He completed five more during that period with related themes and artistic approaches.
For this painting, Cezanne chose commonplace objects as his themes. In pottery, there are apples and oranges on it. The still life has two bowls, each holding a cluster of fruits. The environment is littered with more fruits.
There is a white jug with vibrant flower motifs amidst all the fruits. Underneath a bright drape is a wooden table. The right side of the landscape appears brighter than the left, creating contrast as though a light is shining on one side of it.
The entire painting was planned out. Then, he created a singular equilibrium by utilizing the proper colors and things.
Still Life with Skull
Cezanne’s art started to take on a gloomy quality at the end of his life, focusing on skulls and other symbols of death and gloom. This trend in his later work is well-illustrated in Still Life with Skull, representing his overall aesthetic sensibilities. This is a stunning and mysterious art by Cezanne.
A white sheet, a variety of fruit, and a skull are all on a table. The fruits are depicted in yellows, reds, and greens that appear to have been projected in light right onto the canvas rather than having been painted. It looks delicious enough to eat.
However, the skull portrays a sense of death as it looks to be gazing down at the representations of life with a sorrowful emptiness in its eye holes. In addition, the skull’s yellowed tones blend into the yellow spots on the nearby pieces of fruit, adding a somewhat sardonic touch that suggests that life and death are influencing one another.
Conclusion
The work of Cézanne would pave the way for the avant-garde, Cubist, and Fauvist art styles that would emerge during the following decades. Numerous still-life paintings produced between the 1870s and 1890s by history’s most significant painters capture Cezanne’s distinct style. It’s crucial to remember that still-life paintings in the period were not well-regarded, but Cézanne’s approach questioned what constitutes art itself and gave the genre new significance.
