''Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier'' (English: ''Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl'') is an oil on canvas painting created circa 1893 to 1894 by French artist

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

. It is a formal

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

composition that displays Cézanne's exploration of form, balance and symmetry in objects. On 10 May 1999, the painting was sold at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

auction for $60.5 million, making it the most expensive still life painting ever sold at an auction.

Background

Cézanne explored various genres throughout his artistic career, including landscapes and portraiture, but repeatedly returned to the subject of still life. It was a genre that historically had been disregarded in art as unimaginative, yet Cézanne challenged the establishment by focusing on everyday objects. He was particularly drawn to fruit, which he used to explore the correspondence between objects and the harmony and balance of composition. Although his objects appear to have been placed randomly, the images were carefully constructed to experiment with perspective. Cézanne was fascinated by the exploration of optics in art. His still life paintings were a study in the geometric forms of objects and also in the shifting ways that our eyes view them. He attempted to depict objects from various perspectives to capture the complexity of the visual image. He wrote that, "Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realising one's sensations". Cézanne's distinctive brushwork and distortion of the subject eventually influenced new art styles during the 20th century such as

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

Description

This painting is a formal representation of its subject title, depicting a wooden table upon which are placed a large earthenware jug and a fruit bowl stacked with apples and oranges. To the left of the painting a curtain hangs in front of a patterned wall. A white cloth has been draped across the table with various fruits placed among its folds. The composition displays a study of outlines and a symmetry of objects. The earthenware jug has been depicted in a unique manner, in contradiction to ordinary perspective, and has been adapted to the shapes of the fruit and the other elements of the composition. The rich colours of the objects have been individually rendered with a full range of varying shades.

Provenance

The painting was owned by

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

and subsequently owned by

Ambroise Vollard Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866 – 21 July 1939) was a French art dealer who is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotio ...

, Cornelis Hoogendijk, Paul Rosenberg,

Albert C. Barnes Albert Coombs Barnes (January 2, 1872 – July 24, 1951) was an American chemist, businessman, art collector, writer, and educator, and the founder of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.“Biographical Note,” Albert C. Barne ...

, and the

Carroll Carstairs Carroll Chevalier Carstairs MC (20 March 1888 – 2 October 1948) was an American art dealer who served in the Grenadier Guards of the British Army during World War I. He was a son of Charles Stewart Carstairs (2 August 1865 – 9 July 1928), a ...

Gallery. On 10 May 1999, the painting was sold at

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for $60,502,500 (equivalent to $ million in ), a record price, during the sale of the Whitney family collection. Billionaire

Ken Griffin Ken Griffin (1914–1988) was a Western cowboy, leather worker, magician, and author. As a leatherworker, Griffin helped transition leathercraft from strictly a vocation to an accessible hobby through his work and teaching. As a magician, Griffin ...

purchased the painting to add to his private collection. The painting was later resold to Steve Wynn in August 1999 in a private sale for an undisclosed price.

Other version

A second version of the work, painted by Cézanne in the same year under the same title, is in a private collection.

References

External links