Painted in 1920, Napkin and Apples exemplifies Max Weber’s lifelong still life practice. From 1905 to 1908, Weber lived and worked in Paris, where leading figures of the avant-garde were developing radical new modes of visual expression. Weber was profoundly influenced by Paul Cézanne, the French Post-Impressionist master revered for his still life practice. Napkin and Apples echoes Cézanne’s still life practice, evidenced in the indefinable surface of the table and the hatched brush strokes of the background. Weber would later use the present painting as the source for a series of lithographs titled Still Life with Apples (c. 1928-30).