Paul Cezanne - The Basket of Apples

The Basket of Apples (La Corbeille de pommes), painted around 1893 in oil on canvas by French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne. The painting arranges apples, a tilted basket, a bottle, biscuits and a folded white cloth across a tabletop whose edges do not quite align. Cézanne deliberately shifts the viewpoint from one object to another, making the table appear unstable while keeping the composition carefully balanced through colour and form. Technical examination has shown that he planned parts of this off-kilter arrangement in an underdrawing and then modified them as he painted. Cézanne signed the canvas, an unusual choice for him, and the work was included in his first retrospective organised by Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1895.