"This Cézanne that you ask me for is a pearl of exceptional quality, and I have already refused three hundred francs for it. It is one of my most treasured possessions, and except in absolute necessity, I would give up my last shirt before the picture," wrote Gauguin, who owned Still Life with Compotier, Fruit, and Glass, to his friend, the artist Schuffenecker, in June 1888. In a letter to his wife in June 1885, he wrote, "I'm keeping my two Cézannes; they're rare of their kind because he finished so little of his work, and one day they'll be worth a great deal" (Lettres de Gauguin, edited by M. Malingue, Paris, 1949, pp. 75, 132).

This picture is one of the earliest of the so-called constructive period and also one of the most finished. Cézanne's art had undergone considerable change since The Black Clock. The objects, especially the fruit, have clean contours and are modeled by color only; the front and top of the chest and the wall behind, instead of meeting at right angles, continue into one another, contrary to the rules of perspective. The compotier is doubly distorted: its bowl is elongated to the left and rises at the back. But the composition is so well organized, cogent, and unified that this break with the rules of traditional perspective is apparent only upon looking closely.

Cézanne's careful and systematic study of the reflections on the bowl and the napkin, and the absence of blacks and browns in the shadows, show what he had learned from Impressionism. He did not break with the movement; he went beyond it. Using the freedom it allowed, he quietly evolved an entirely new system of representation that transcended four centuries of Western painting.

Gauguin's enthusiasm for the picture is easily understood. He bought it in about 1884 when he was still somewhat unsure of himself, but in Cézanne's still life, he found the successful realization of ideas beginning to appear in his own work; the Cézanne must surely have been a source of reassurance for Gauguin. It appears in the background of his portrait of Marie Derrien, otherwise known as "Lagadu," 1890; (The Art Institute of Chicago; see G. Wildenstein, Gauguin, Paris, 1964, no. 387).

One can also understand Maurice Denis's choice of this still life for his Homage to Cézanne (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris). Instead of placing a bust of the artist in the center of the composition, as Fantin-Latour did in his Homage to Delacroix (Musée du Louvre, Galerie du Jeu de Paume), Denis placed the Cézanne on an easel surrounded by Odilon Redon, Vuillard, the collector and critic André Mellerio, Ambroise Vollard, Sérusier, Ranson, Roussel, Bonnard, himself, and Madame Denis. Denis made a lithographed copy of Still Life with Compotier, Fruit, and Glass as well.

Object number:

69.1991 

Credit:

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller 

Provenance:

Before 1888, bought by Gauguin from Cézanne; probably in the Ambroise Vollard Collection, since Maurice Denis painted his Homage to Cézanne in Vollard's house; Dr. Georges Viau, Paris (in the Viau sale, Paris, March 4, 1907, no. 13, sold for 19,000 francs); Prince de Wagram, Paris; Marczell von Nemès, Budapest (in the von Nemès sale, Paris, June 18, 1913, no. 85); Josse Hessel, Paris; Auguste Pellerin, Paris.

Gallery label from Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection, July 17–August 31, 2009.