The Vase of Tulips

The table in this still life of flowers and fruit appears in several of Paul Cezanne’s other paintings, although scholars do not agree about which of the artist’s residences housed this piece of furniture. As is typical of Cezanne’s work, the painting is carefully considered and the composition hard won: the traces of at least three other pieces of fruit (presumably oranges) at lower left and near the vase attest to the artist’s changing opinion as he struggled to make the arrangement work. Even in the final version, there remains a tense spatial relationship between the objects, which seem to float in the picture plane rather than being anchored to the tabletop.