The Basket of Apples

c. 1893

Oil on canvas, 65 × 80 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago

Apples, a basket and a bottle crowd a draped table. Everything is arranged for the balance of the whole picture, not for a faithful record of the scene.

The tabletop's back edge breaks into three parts, each at a different height. Writers have read the picture as combining several viewpoints rather than one fixed view.
It was first shown in 1895, at the artist's first solo exhibition, at Ambroise Vollard's Paris gallery.
Look at the basket: it tips forward, as if about to spill its apples.
He reworked the left table edge, which now warps downward.
It came to the Art Institute in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.

Still life sat at the bottom of the traditional ranking of subjects. That very neglect seems to have attracted him, since it left him free to invent.

Image: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0