Flowers in an Olive Jar 1880

Paul Cézanne painted "Flowers in an Olive Jar" with oil on canvas. Cézanne lived in a time of significant social upheaval in France. The rigid class structures were being questioned, and the rise of industrialization changed people's relationships with labor and leisure. During this period, the floral still-life genre allowed artists to explore new modes of representation outside the strictures of academic painting. Cézanne was interested in the objective observation of nature. Yet, within the confines of a traditional subject matter, his still life paintings develop an alternative narrative. In them, he seems to be less interested in the blooms and more in the formal relationships of color, shape, and form. The flowers, rendered with thick, visible brushstrokes, become abstract elements. The olive jar, a humble object, grounds the composition, while the surface on which it rests seems to tilt and shift. In this way, Cézanne invites us to meditate on the emotional and personal impact of how we perceive the world around us.