The Vase of Tulips (c. 1890): Artwork and History

The Vase of Tulips (c. 1890) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The table in this still life of flowers and fruit appears in several of Paul Cezanne’s other paintings, although scholars do not agree about which of the artist’s residences housed this piece of furniture. As is typical of Cezanne’s work, the painting is carefully considered and the composition hard won: the traces of at least three other pieces of fruit (presumably oranges) at lower left and near the vase attest to the artist’s changing opinion as he struggled to make the arrangement work. Even in the final version, there remains a tense spatial relationship between the objects, which seem to float in the picture plane rather than being anchored to the tabletop.

Object facts

• Title: The Vase of Tulips
• Date: c. 1890
• Artist attribution: Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906)
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 59.6 × 42.3 cm (23 1/2 × 16 5/8 in.); Framed: 84.5 × 67 × 10.2 cm (33 1/4 × 26 3/8 × 4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.423

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.