Paul Cézanne Still Life Painting Fruit in Elementary Series' Leviathan

Summary: The Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit prettify a room with a poor copy of a purloined van Gogh in the Elementary series episode The Leviathan.

Fruit (ca. 1879 oil on canvas) by French Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne (Jan. 19, 1839-Oct. 22, 1906) numbers among fictitiously accumulated paintings in the collection of philanthropist Peter Kent, deduced by Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) as retired art thief Le Chevalier, in Elementary tv series' Leviathan (season 1 episode 10); in real life, St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum holds Cézanne's fruity still life: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (dalbera), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

The Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit appears appropriately with originals, and inappropriately with a $40 lithograph, in the Leviathan episode of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) series Elementary Dec. 13, 2012.

The oil on canvas from 1880 becomes part of the original wall art in the waiting room of the Kent Philanthropic Foundation in New York City. A $40 lithograph of Vincent van Gogh's (March 30, 1853-July 29, 1890) Pietà ("Sorrow") communicates cheap concealment amid legitimate originals to Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller). It disguises a religious depiction diverted by Peter Kent during his dangerous, dishonest days as Le Chevalier ("The Cavalier") from the Aster Museum of Modern Art.

The exposure earns the originals eternal equivalence and the Pietà extraction back to the fictitious Aster, not to the actual Van Gogh Museum or Vatican Museums.

The State Hermitage Museum (Госуда́рственный Эрмита́ж, Gosudárstvennyj Ermitáž) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, functions as the legal, non-fictitious home of the Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit.

State Hermitage Museum visitors get free admission December 7, for founding anniversary 1764 and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (287?-305?), and the first Thursday of every month. December 7 honors Catherine II (May 2, 1729-Nov. 1, 1796), Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias (July 9, 1762-Nov. 17, 1796) and museum founding collector. Three hundred and seventeen paintings from Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (Nov. 21, 1710-Aug. 9, 1775), indebted, insolvent merchant from Konitz, Royal Prussia Chojnice, Poland), initiated museum collections.

The Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit joins other French Neoclassical, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the State Hermitage Museum complex at Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya (Embankment), 34.

The State Hermitage Museum catalogue keeps a digital image and painting-related information about the 45- by 55.3-centimeter- (17.72- by 21.77-inch) oil on canvas from about 1879. It lists the Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit as located within the French paintings of the 19th-20th centuries subcollection in General Staff Building room 410.

The entry mentions that "The world of ordinary objects attracted the artist (Paul Cézanne, Jan. 19, 1839-Oct. 22, 1906) with the potential expressiveness of three-dimensional forms." It notes that "the theme recalls the still lives of the Old Masters, with its china, napkins and fruits" even though "Cezanne was indifferent to texture."

The Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit offers a berry- and leaf-patterned white bowl, bluish stoppered flask, bread, four orange-red and two yellow fruit, white napkins. 

The State Hermitage Museum online catalogue entry presents the painter as "seeking to bring out in each element the concrete form and mass of the object."

Orderly placement, simple forms and "stable, unchanging" colors queue up in Cézanne's questing "not the passing moment but the expression of the permanent and the eternal." The entry recognizes eternity and permanence in the painter revealing the painting's "full significance," such as "the blue tinge suggesting a certain thickness to the air." It seeks the "strange unity" in forms that Sherlock seeks in pastimes, people and places for the means, motives and opportunities that start and stop criminals.

Perhaps director Peter Werner and writers Corinne Brinkerhoff, Robert Doherty and Craig Sweeny turn to the Paul Cézanne still life painting Fruit for deductive, observant permanence.

Life seems to still to total focus on the current bank vault case, with a trail of discovery leading to fictitiously collected art works, such as Paul Cézanne's Fruit; yet, Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) finds time for a dinner invite to charm Joan Watson's (Lucy Liu) mother and brother: Elementary @ElementaryCBS, via Facebook Dec. 17, 2012

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Fruit (ca. 1879 oil on canvas) by French Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne (Jan. 19, 1839-Oct. 22, 1906) numbers among fictitiously accumulated paintings in the collection of philanthropist Peter Kent, deduced by Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) as retired art thief Le Chevalier, in Elementary tv series' Leviathan (season 1 episode 10); in real life, St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum holds Cézanne's fruity still life: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (dalbera), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/31113351353

Life seems to still to total focus on the current bank vault case, with a trail of discovery leading to fictitiously collected art works, such as Paul Cézanne's Fruit; yet, Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) finds time for a dinner invite to charm Joan Watson's (Lucy Liu) mother and brother: Elementary @ElementaryCBS, via Facebook Dec. 17, 2012, @ https://www.facebook.com/ElementaryCBS/photos/a.151627898295663.14686.151013691690417/203998193058633/

For further information:

"Cezanne, Paul. 1839-1906. Fruit." Hermitagemuseum.org > Digital Collection > Paintings.
Available @ https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/01.%20Paintings/28726/

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London England: George Newsnes Ltd., 1892.
Available via Project Gutenberg @ http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661?msg=welcome_stranger

Elementary: The First Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Dec. 13, 2012.

Marriner, Derdriu. 28 December 2012. “Paul Signac Painting Women at the Well in Elementary Series' Leviathan.” Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/paul-signac-painting-women-at-well-in.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 21 December 2012. “The Van Gogh Pietà Painting in Elementary Series Episode The Leviathan.” Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-van-gogh-pieta-painting-in.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 14 December 2012. “Edward Hopper Painting Western Motel in Elementary Series' Leviathan.” Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/edward-hopper-painting-western-motel-in.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 29 September 2012. "Are Lesser Clovers Sherlock's Lucky Shamrocks on Elementary's Pilot?" Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/are-lesser-clovers-sherlocks-lucky.html