Matisse’s forte was figure paintings, but he also actively created still lifes. After World War I, he moved from Paris to Nice, in southern France, a move that led, in the 1920s, to begin working in rich colors. The composition, with the eye-catching red fruit carelessly arranged and the plaster torso in the center, reminds one of Cézanne’s work. Matisse, who, at twenty-nine, had purchased a painting by Cézanne, was greatly influenced by him. In this painting, he tries to answer the question of how to pull together the three-dimensional and flat, decorative motifs.