A basket brimming with apples sits tipped on its side at the left, its rim propped on a small block, causing the fruit to tumble forward onto a rumpled white cloth. The apples, painted in mottled greens, yellows, and reds, spill across the table and cloth, their rounded forms rendered with thick, visible brushstrokes that give them a dense, almost sculptural presence. Behind the apples, a dark green wine bottle stands upright, its tilted axis echoing the slant of the basket and contributing to the sense of instability in the arrangement.

To the right, a white plate holds a precarious stack of elongated cookies, known as langues de chat, their foreshortened shapes outlined with loose, sketch-like marks. The table itself appears to tilt and shift, its edges and corners drawn at odd angles, creating an impossible perspective that defies logical space. A soft, even light falls across the scene, casting gentle shadows and highlighting the folds and creases of the cloth, which is painted with broad, energetic strokes of blue, white, and touches of red.

The background is a flat, cool expanse of blue-grey, with subtle variations in tone that set off the vivid colors of the fruit and cloth. At the lower left, the artist’s signature, 'P. Cézanne,' appears clearly, an unusual addition that suggests the importance he gave to this work or its first owner. The Basket of Apples was created by Paul Cézanne around 1893, at a time when he was transforming the still life genre with his innovative approach to composition and perspective.

The painting was the first by Cézanne to enter the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection, acquired through the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection in 1926. Cézanne’s manipulation of perspective, rejecting naturalistic depiction in favor of multiple viewpoints, would later influence movements such as Fauvism and Cubism. Still life had long been considered a minor subject in art, but Cézanne saw it as a blank slate for experimentation, using it to challenge conventions of space and representation.

The painting’s provenance traces a path through several Paris and Berlin galleries and private collections before its acquisition in Chicago, including ownership by Ambroise Vollard, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Cassirer, Max Linde, Jos Hessel, and Paul Rosenberg. The Basket of Apples has appeared in numerous exhibitions since 1895, under various titles such as 'Korb mit Äpfeln,' 'Pommes,' and 'Le panier de pommes.'