Still Life with a Teapot, 64×81 cm, c. 1869, held at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) is France's most representative Post-Impressionist painter, known as the father of modern painting. In his early years, like the Impressionists, he engaged in plein air sketching, exploring form, color, and light. He participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, exhibiting Houses on a Hillside. A critic described it as "convulsive epileptic delirium." The artist clearly distinguished his work from others (it was not characteristic of the Impressionist focus on external light). Two years later, when the second exhibition arrived, Cézanne refused to participate. His works were repeatedly rejected by the Salon. At the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, he was once again disappointed. From then on, Cézanne distanced himself from Impressionism, becoming more isolated, and refused all Salon exhibitions. In 1889, he wrote about this period: "I must solve my painting problems in silence, until one day I feel fully capable of defending the theory of my attempts."

Starting in 1878, he strove to transform visual perception, modeling himself after 17th-century painter Nicolas Poussin, seeking eternal meaning and value, discovering solidity or eternity in painting. Within the structural organization of plastic painting, he developed a style of pure modernist form. In 1886, Émile Zola, a realist writer and Cézanne's childhood friend, could not affirm or understand his painter friend's work. In his novel L'Œuvre, he criticized Cézanne as a "failed painter," deeply hurting him, leading to their break in friendship. It was not until 1899 that Cézanne's work began to gain recognition. After 1896, he retreated to Provence, his hometown, to devote himself to his famous series of Mont Sainte-Victoire. In his later years, honored by the Salon des Indépendants, his works gradually gained favor among young artists. In the autumn of 1904, the Salon dedicated a special room for a grand exhibition of his work. This great father of modernism passed away in 1906; the Cubist movement was born during the grand Cézanne retrospective in 1907. Cézanne's main subjects included figures, still lifes, landscapes, and bathers. His painting philosophy and main subjects had a significant impact on major 20th-century art trends, especially on Fauvism, Cubism, and abstract art.

Still life was a favored subject of Cézanne, especially in his later years (from 1890), when he systematically explored this aspect in depth. This work is one of the painter's more notable early pieces. At this time, he was still heavily influenced by Manet, highlighting the form of objects and expressing the space into which objects transition. Most striking is a knife on the table, a tradition in still-life painting, as it provides an illusion of deep space. Through this rational exploration, Cézanne moved from observing nature to a spiritual realm, expressing a new modernity through the organization of nature.