Paul Cézanne

Still Life with Water Jug

c.1892–3

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Not on display

Artist: Paul Cézanne 1839–1906
Original title: Nature morte à la cruche
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 530 x 711 mm
frame: 710 x 900 x 90 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Bequeathed by C. Frank Stoop 1933
Reference: N04725

Display caption

Cézanne was preoccupied with still life, and painted the same objects over and over again. His concentrated study of familiar items enabled him to develop a new way of capturing his visual sensations. He believed that conventional perspective, which uses a single viewpoint, did not accurately reflect the way that we perceive the world. In this painting, he combined several viewpoints of the fat-bellied jug and fruit. Like many of his works, it was left unfinished.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

Paul Cézanne 1839-1906

N04725 Nature Morte à la Cruche (Still Life with Water Jug) c.1892-3

Not inscribed
Oil on canvas, 20 7/8 x 28 (53 x 71)
Bequeathed by C. Frank Stoop 1933
Prov: With Ambroise Vollard, Paris; C. Frank Stoop, London
Exh: Paintings by Cézanne, Tate Gallery, September-October 1954 (not in catalogue)
Lit: J.B. Manson, 'Mr Frank Stoop's Modern Pictures' in Apollo, X, 1929, p.132; Lionello Venturi, Cézanne: son Art - son Oeuvre (Paris 1936), No.749, Vol.1, p.226, repr. Vol.2, pl.246 (dated 1895-1900); Douglas Cooper, 'Two Cézanne Exhibitions II' in Burlington Magazine, XCVI, 1954, p.380 (dated c.1892-3); Lawrence Gowing, 'Notes on the Development of Cézanne' in Burlington Magazine, XCVIII, 1956, p.191; Douglas Cooper, 'Cézanne's Chronology' in Burlington Magazine, XCVIII, 1956, p.191; Ian Dunlop and Sandra Orienti, The Complete Paintings of Cézanne (London 1972), No.803, p.123, repr. p.122 (dated 1895-1900)
Repr: L'Amour de l'Art, VI, 1932, p.199

This picture belongs to a group of still-life paintings of a relatively straightforward and simple character in which the table top is placed parallel to the picture plane and is somewhat tilted towards it; and in which there is a plain cloth lying across the table, with plates and fruit placed on or by it, and a larger object at the back (cf. Venturi Nos.498, 599, 600-1, 606, 619, all of which can with reasonable certainty be assigned to the period 1888-93). It is rather difficult to date this work precisely owing to its unfinished condition, but it may be compared with the Courtauld Institute version of 'The Card Players', painted c.1893, and with the unfinished still life Venturi No.707, of the same period. The presence of the blue water jug (an object still in Cézanne's last studio at the Chemin des Lauves) seems to prove that it was painted at Aix. The jug also appears in the still lifes Venturi Nos.499, 500, 601, 609, 612 and 622.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.104-5, reproduced p.104