Terracotta Pots and Flowers (Pots en terre cuite et fleurs)

Terracotta Pots and Flowers (1891) at the Barnes Foundation is one of a series of garden still lifes Cézanne made incorporating the clay pots and flowers of the Jas de Bouffan garden, occupying the boundary between studio still life and outdoor plein-air painting. By 1891 his method for analyzing three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface was fully developed, and these garden still lifes brought the rigor of his indoor arrangements into natural light conditions. The irregular, rounded forms of terracotta pots offered excellent structural challenges for his faceted color plane system.

Terracotta warm reds-oranges alternate with the cooler blues and greens of foliage and shadows. The rounded pot forms are described through adjacent color patches of varying temperature. Flowers are treated summarily—dabs of color rather than botanical description—in contrast to the more carefully analyzed pot forms.