Still-Life with a Watermelon and Pomegranates

Paul Cézanne

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Of the twenty or so watercolor still lifes Cézanne produced during his final years, this work is among the most fully realized. With fluid strokes of saturated color, the artist calls attention to his skills of both observation—his attention to the reflections among objects is rarely as apparent—and creation. The rounded objects clustered together, including a hulking watermelon, two pomegranates, a bulbous glass vase or carafe, and a sugar bowl conjured from the reserved white of the paper, have both a volumetric quality and an intangibility. Marks in the corners left by thumbtacks, especially evident at upper right, are a reminder of the process of making this luminous and intensely colored sheet.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art