Roses in a Bottle [recto]

Paul Cezanne

National Gallery of Art

A bouquet of at least six red and pink-edged white flowers in a blue bottle is at the center of this vertical, still-life watercolor. Some petals are picked out with blue-gray lines, and the blooms are touched with areas of golden yellow, emerald green, and sky blue around a graphite sketch. The bottom portion of the bottle itself fades away with sketchy lines and washes about three-quarters of the way down the painting. The space behind the flowers is painted with loose strokes making widely spaced, overlapping, diagonal bands filled in with frosty green, mauve pink, smoky pale purple, and muted blue. Another set of bands angling into the composition from the left edge could represent the corner of a table.