Homage to Cézanne

[3] The Cézanne painting had belonged to Paul Gauguin who is thus evoked, despite not being pictured, having left France permanently in 1895 for the South Seas.

[6][7] Included are the symbolist painter Odilon Redon, the focus of attention on the far left, Paul Sérusier (Nabi instigator) centre talking to Redon, and at the back, left to right, Édouard Vuillard, the critic André Mellerio wearing a top hat, Ambroise Vollard behind the easel, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Pierre Bonnard with a pipe, and on the far right Marthe Denis, Maurice's wife.

[3] Over time, Redon had come to be more closely associated with Cézanne than with Symbolist fellow traveller Gustave Moreau.

The composition has strong verticals in the erect poses of the subjects, the easel and the walking stick, against which the brightly coloured rectangle of the framed still life is contrasted.

Vollard is grasping the easel which is bursting out of the top edge of the painting, and the figures fully occupy the space of the canvas, leaving little room for anything else.

[10] A possible antecedent for the work is A Studio at Les Batignolles (1870) by Henri Fantin-Latour, which features, amongst others, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Émile Zola and Claude Monet.

[12] Homage to Cézanne was in the collection of the writer André Gide who donated it to the Musée du Luxembourg in 1928.

Homage to Cézanne , Maurice Denis, 1900. Oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Fruit Bowl, Glass and Apples , Paul Cézanne, 1879–80. Oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art , New York. This is the work that is the centrepiece of Denis's painting.
Paul Ranson in Nabi Costume , Paul Sérusier, 1890. Oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
A Studio at Les Batignolles , Henri Fantin-Latour, 1870. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. A possible antecedent for Homage to Cézanne .