Cézanne - Still Life with Curtain

Paul Cézanne was said to have "consolidated Impressionism". And, indeed, he did not draw before painting: on the contrary, he created space and perspective through his skilful use of flat areas of colour, freely associated, but at the same time contrasted and compared. His still lifes depict simple objects: a cloth, apples, a vase or a bowl. The focused study of familiar objects had allowed Cézanne to develop a new way of capturing his visual feelings.

Still Life with Curtain is an oil on canvas painting by the French painter Paul Cézanne, painted around 1898 and kept at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. This still life prefigures the subject of the " Still Life with Apples and Oranges" composed a few months later and kept at the Musée d'Orsay. Like the latter, it represents a still life of fruits (apples, oranges and lemons) placed on two small white plates with white linens. In the background, a flowery curtain plays on the primary oppositions of dark blue and orange, while a pitcher decorated with flowers on a white background recalls the different tones of the whole. Cézanne composes broken vertical lines with the different folds of the fabrics which contrast with the roundness of the fruits, the plates and the flowers of the pitcher.

This painting was part of the collection of the famous Moscow collector Ivan Morozov, before being confiscated by the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918.

Still Life with Curtain, 1898
The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg