Paul Cézanne
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Apples by Paul Cézanne, 1878
He painted apples over and over for most of his working life, dozens of times. The line everyone quotes is that he meant to astonish Paris with one — though nobody seems certain he ever actually said it.
Erisava: Does this ever stop being patches of paint and turn into fruit for you?
The Card Players by Paul Cézanne, 1890
The men at the table were, supposedly, farm workers from his family's estate. He painted this same card game more than once, with fewer players crowded round it each time.
Erisava: The men are the same dusty blue and brown as the wall behind them. On purpose?
Still Life by Paul Cézanne
The same jugs, cloths and bowls turn up in dozens of these — a table set up indoors and gone at for weeks on end. He worked so slowly, it's said, that the fruit went off before he was done, so he took to using wax ones.
Erisava: There's so much crammed on this table that none of it looks like food anymore.
Still Life with Skull (Nature morte au crâne) by Paul Cézanne, 1897
A skull sitting in with the fruit was an old convention — the reminder that you and the pears are both on the clock. He reportedly kept a couple of them in his studio and came back to painting them near the end of his life.
Erisava: That skull's the same yellow as the fruit. Does that make it less grim, or more?
Mont Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne, 1902
They say he painted this one mountain outside Aix over and over for the last twenty-odd years of his life — the counts people give run past thirty, once you add the watercolours. Nobody commissioned them as far as I can tell. He just kept going back.
Erisava: Painting the same hill for twenty years sounds mad. I sort of admire it.