It was perhaps unfair of the critic Albert Aurier to malign Sérusier's early work as "an almost slavish imitation of Gauguin," yet when looking at *Still-life: the Artist's Studio* it seems this claim may be justified. The subject matter is almost identical to that of Gauguin, and the knife to the left of the composition rests in a strikingly similar position to Gauguin's in his *Still-life with Fan* c. 1889.

But Sérusier's painting is not simply a copy. Both Gauguin and Sérusier were heavily influenced by the work of Cézanne, in whose art Sérusier found a tangible expression of his desire to imbue subjects from the everyday with a sense of the spiritual. Of Cézanne's still-lifes with apples he said:

*"He is the pure painter. The purpose, even the concept of the object represented, disappears before the charm of his coloured forms. Of an apple by Cézanne one says: How beautiful! One would not peel it; one would like to copy it. It is in that that the spiritual power of Cézanne consists."*

While Cézanne's apples exemplified Sérusier's concerns, Gauguin's important color lesson in the Bois d'Amour gave Sérusier a means to express them further. In *Still-life: the Artist's Studio,* Sérusier uses color as an expression of emotion. The vibrant red of the table—a direct pictorial quotation from Gauguin's *Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)* 1888—invigorates an otherwise neutral interior scene. Laid across this red plane, the cobalt blue of the knife's blade leads the eye straight out the window and across the roofs of Paris, which gleam with bright oranges and flecks of yellow. The scene is further invigorated by Sérusier's odd juxtaposition of spatial planes: horizontals are created by the table, the windowsill, and a distant building, and then cut through by the diagonals of roofs and the folds of the cloth. The whole composition is balanced by the strong, black verticals of the chair, echoed in the window frame and the distant chimney stacks.

After experimental paintings such as this, Aurier's critical comment more fairly notes that Sérusier "did not wait long to free his own personality, and his later works show a poetic symbolism, a beauty and masterly synthesis of lines and colours."

Inventory number: RF 1984 11

Provenance: 

? - ? : Sérusier collection, Paul (Mrs.)

? - 1984: Boutaric collection, Henriette

1984 : legacy of Miss Henriette Boutaric) to the National Museums

1984: attributed to the Louvre Museum

1984: assigned to the Musée d’Orsay by the Musée du Louvre

2023, deposited at the Fabre Museum, Montpellier (deposit decision dated 02/01/2023)