Jinishing Touches
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n the side of the octagonal pitcher, where the handle begins
pitcher, toward the left, and the patch just to the right of the blue pot; and in a paler, more
its arc off the vessel's body, there lies a stroke
washed and transparent version of the color,
of green that strays onto the inner part of the handle (opposite). It is likely that that
in the patch of green left of the base of the pitcher and on the side of the white pot.
one long, tapering patch of emerald green
That strip of green on the pitcher's
was among those marks that came last, that were added as finishing touches in order to
handle complements the reds of the tapestry and the apples that lie around the pitcher—
satisfy Cezanne, somehow, that he was done,
like the bit of washed red that has escaped the leftmost apple to curve onto the pitcher's
that he could stop, that he should add no more. It is nothing like the top and final layer
base as a piece of colored shadow. It punctuates the preponderance of blues everywhere
of a traditional picture, either as it was taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or as it was prac-
in the still life, congregating around the
ticed by other "new"painters, such as Monet or Degas. There a glaze, a bit of local color,
pitcher, loaded thickly and opaquely into the long ellipse of interstitial space opened up by
or a unifying layer of oil or pastel would
the pitcher's handle, particularly in the lower
complete, cover, or even out what had begun
curve, which it appears to fill up like liquid,
as an idea first sketched in pencil or painted
or like a bit of blue flame whose tapering
in roughly to establish the composition's
shape resembles that of the green patch. It
main lines. Here, instead, it is a long scrap
marks the white of the pitcher in a manner
of color that picks up the bits of green found
that clearly has nothing to do with the briefly
elsewhere, under and over other colors—
indicated faint blue design upon its surface.
in the tapestry, particularly the patch that
It lies atop several veils of blue and rose,
encroaches upon the pointed lip of the
a bit of opacity on top of their transparency
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