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Fruit and a Jug on a Table

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906)
about 1890–94

Medium/Technique Oil on canvas
Dimensions 32.4 x 40.6 cm (12 3/4 x 16 in.)
Credit Line Bequest of John T. Spaulding
Accession Number48.524
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
“I want to astonish Paris with an apple,” said Cézanne, who lived and worked in Provence for much of his career. While he relished the quiet solitude of the south, he maintained contact with the art capital, sending paintings (including this one) to Paris for exhibition and sale. Cézanne once explained his fascination with painting fruits: “They love having their portraits done. They sit there as if demanding pardon for changing color. They come to you in all their perfume, speaking of the fields they have left, the rain that has nourished them, the sunrises they have seen.”

Provenance1895, Ambroise Vollard (b. 1867 - d. 1939), Paris; November 26, 1895, sold by Vollard to Eugène Blot (b. 1857), Paris [see note 1]; May 9-10, 1900, Blot sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 22, not sold; May 10, 1906, Blot sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 19, not sold; 1909, still with Blot [see note 2]. Paul Rosenberg, Paris. By 1913, Gottlieb Friedrich Reber (b. 1880 - d. 1959), Lausanne [see note 3]. 1922, Hans Wendland (dealer; b. 1880), Paris [see note 4]; February 24, 1922, Wendland liquidation sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 221, to Durand-Ruel, Paris; transferred to Durand-Ruel, New York (stock no. 4744); May 10, 1922, sold by Durand-Ruel, New York, to John Taylor Spaulding (b. 1870 - d. 1948), Boston; 1948, bequest of John Taylor Spaulding to the MFA. (Accession Date: June 3, 1948)

NOTES:
[1] See John Rewald, "The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a Catalogue Raisonné" (New York, 1996), vol. 1, p. 456, cat. no. 741 and Rebecca A. Rabinow, ed., Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2006), p. 47, n. 88. In his memoirs, Blot claimed that he bought it from Vollard in 1892, which is not possible according to Rewald, who dates the painting to 1893/95.

[2] Included in the exhibition "Natures mortes et fleurs," Galerie Blot, Paris, 1909, no. 4.

[3] Included in the exhibitions of Reber's collection at Paul Cassirer, Berlin and Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt, in 1913.

[4] Wendland was a German art dealer living in Paris at the outbreak of WWI. His collection was confiscated by French authorities and sold in three auctions during the 1920s.