拍品專文
In the catalogue to the recent exhibition of Cézanne's work, Joseph Rishel wrote an elegant description of the present painting:
This lively page shows a group of apples and a large pear arrayed on a simple kitchen table with a napkin and the familiar blue ginger jar wrapped in willow strands. A set of flat planes seems to fold in and out in the background. The leaf pattern on the right plane, which has been identified as part of the decorative screen which Cézanne made for his father in his youth, is cleverly juxtaposed with the large pear just in front of it. One can easily imagine that Cézanne took great pleasure not only in painting but also in arranging his still-life elements, in calculating the spatial and coloristic effects they would produce when rendered on canvas or paper. (J.J. Rishel, exh. cat., op. cit., Grand Palais, Paris, 1995-1996, p. 287)
The still-life elements in the present work reappear in several roughly contemporaneous watercolors and paintings. A slightly larger watercolor (Rewald, no. 290; Private Collection), for example, depicts the same objects in a slightly different arrangement, augmented by the addition of a plate; and a series of oil paintings (e.g. fig. 1), variously dated by John Rewald from 1887 to 1893, include the ginger jar which we see to the left in the present work. Discussing the relationship between these various compositions, Rishel continues:
In the work of Degas, Picasso or a host of other artists, such groups would suggest hierarchical or chronological sequences, with a "minor" work on paper most likely anticipating a "major" painting. But in the case of Cézanne it is difficult to discern any such order of priority or hierarchy. Each of these...works, for example, focuses on a different set of compositional problems, reconfiguring the fruit, the ginger jar, the table, and the background in different ways, with varied coloristic weights establishing a fresh pictorial economy in each case. The resulting images have quite independent temperaments. It is possible that [the present] page...was the last to be executed, since (if one argues a progression from simplicity to complexity) the planes in the background are more subtly and densely compacted than in the three related compositions. (Ibid., p. 287)
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, Pot de gingembre, 1890-1893
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
This lively page shows a group of apples and a large pear arrayed on a simple kitchen table with a napkin and the familiar blue ginger jar wrapped in willow strands. A set of flat planes seems to fold in and out in the background. The leaf pattern on the right plane, which has been identified as part of the decorative screen which Cézanne made for his father in his youth, is cleverly juxtaposed with the large pear just in front of it. One can easily imagine that Cézanne took great pleasure not only in painting but also in arranging his still-life elements, in calculating the spatial and coloristic effects they would produce when rendered on canvas or paper. (J.J. Rishel, exh. cat., op. cit., Grand Palais, Paris, 1995-1996, p. 287)
The still-life elements in the present work reappear in several roughly contemporaneous watercolors and paintings. A slightly larger watercolor (Rewald, no. 290; Private Collection), for example, depicts the same objects in a slightly different arrangement, augmented by the addition of a plate; and a series of oil paintings (e.g. fig. 1), variously dated by John Rewald from 1887 to 1893, include the ginger jar which we see to the left in the present work. Discussing the relationship between these various compositions, Rishel continues:
In the work of Degas, Picasso or a host of other artists, such groups would suggest hierarchical or chronological sequences, with a "minor" work on paper most likely anticipating a "major" painting. But in the case of Cézanne it is difficult to discern any such order of priority or hierarchy. Each of these...works, for example, focuses on a different set of compositional problems, reconfiguring the fruit, the ginger jar, the table, and the background in different ways, with varied coloristic weights establishing a fresh pictorial economy in each case. The resulting images have quite independent temperaments. It is possible that [the present] page...was the last to be executed, since (if one argues a progression from simplicity to complexity) the planes in the background are more subtly and densely compacted than in the three related compositions. (Ibid., p. 287)
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, Pot de gingembre, 1890-1893
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.