Explore the Description of this artwork, Still Life with Teapot.
Still Life with Teapot was painted towards the end of Cézanne's life, thought to be between 1902 and 1906. It was painted at his studio in Aix-en-Provence and the table on which the objects are arranged still survives at the studio. A cloth is draped over the table, arranged carefully in elaborate but carefully arranged folds. On the cloth is a sugar bowl and a plate on which four fruit have been placed. On an uncovered section of the table, to the right of the painting, rests a teapot, knife and a further two fruit. The strong colours of the vessels, fruit and cloth are set against a washed-out green-grey background. In her 2005 book Colour and Light, Ann Sumner describes the fruit as peaches, though in 1962, art critic David Sylvester stated, "...we don't really know if they are and which of them are apples, oranges, apricots and we don't care. What we know as we look at them, know it physically in our bodies, is the feeling of having the shape of a sphere, a shape that is perfectly compact...."Cézanne would change his position when painting his later still-life works to concentrate on each object individually.  This resulted in the perspective of his work to shift slightly. This can be seen in Still Life with Teapot in which the plate appears to bend and the table legs do not correspond with the angle of the table top.
David Sylvester Aix-en-Provence