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Synthetic Cubism was the second main movement within Cubism that was developed by Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others between 1912 and 1919. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter. It was the beginning of collage materials being introduced as an important ingredient of fine art work. Considered the first work of this new style was Pablo Picasso's Still Life with Chair-caning (1911–1912) which includes oil cloth that was printed to look like chair-caning pasted onto an oval canvas, with text; and rope framing the whole picture. At the upper left are the letters "JOU", which appear in many cubist paintings and refer to the newspaper titled Le Journal. Newspaper clippings were a common inclusion, physical pieces of newspaper, sheet music, and like items were also included in the collages. JOU may also at the same time be a pun on the French words jeu (game) or jouer (to play). Picasso and Braque had a friendly competition with each other and including the letters in their works may have been an extension of their game.

Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The earlier series executed in Paris in 1887 gives the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set executed a year later in Arles shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions. About eight months later Van Gogh hoped to welcome and to impress Gauguin again with Sunflowers, now part of the painted décoration he prepared for the guestroom of his Yellow House where Gauguin was supposed to stay in Arles. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and finally he included them in his exhibit at Les XX in Bruxelles.

Throughout his life, the French painter Paul Cézanne returned again and again to the still life. Encompassing small—scale domestic scenes rather than grand public ones, still life was considered the lowliest of genres by the French Royal Academy, the official arbiter of great art in the nineteenth century. Yet in Still Life with Apples, Cézanne proved that this modest genre could be a vehicle for thinking through the Impressionist project of faithfully representing the appearance of light and space. "Painting from nature is not copying the object," he wrote, "it is realizing one's sensations."

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The Basket of Apples is a still life oil painting noted for its disjointed perspective. It has been described as a balanced composition due to its unbalanced parts; the tilted bottle, the incline of the basket, and the foreshortened lines of the cookies meshing with the lines of the tablecloth. Additionally, the right side of the tabletop is not in the same plane as the left side, as if the image simultaneously reflects two viewpoints. Paintings such as this helped form a bridge between Impressionism and Cubism.

In still lifes, genre scenes, and the occasional portrait, Chardin's skill at rendering the visual and tactile qualities of simple objects won him the admiration of critics like Diderot. In this small still life, Chardin portrayed a modest subject--three walnuts, four peaches, two bunches of grapes, and a pewter mug--but gave the objects monumentality by arranging them in pure geometric groupings and concentrating on their basic forms. He suggested the objects' various textures and substances through the play of light across surfaces and successive applications of paint. In this way, Chardin conveyed the fuzzy skin of the peaches, the hard, brittle shell of the walnuts, the translucence of the grapes, and the heavy, cold exterior of the pewter mug.