Painted in 1914-15, ‘Le Guéridon au vase de fleurs’ is characteristic of the works Vlaminck created in his ‘Cézanne period’ which lasted from 1908 to 1915. Alongside Matisse and Derain, Vlaminck was a principal figure in Fauvism and exhibited at the 1905 Salon d’automne. exhibiting at the 1905 Salon d’automne. However, after experimenting with the Fauvist style for some years, he became disillusioned by what he considered its limitations, and coupled with the rise of Cubism, looked to the father of Modern art -Cézanne.

Cézanne died in October 1906 and the year following two retrospectives of his work were held in Paris, one at the Salon d'Automne and the other at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Vlaminck was deeply inspired by both exhibitions. He adopted a deliberate brushwork, in which the strokes are defined and separate, such as in Cézanne’s paintings. In ‘Le Guéridon au vase de fleurs’ the diagonal brushstrokes of the flowers and table create movement in a geometric still life that is dominated by angular planes and the colour contrasts favoured by Cézanne although in this work the Fauvist colours still burst through in the flowers.

Vlaminck’s ‘Cézannesque’ floral still lifes have an important role in his oeuvre. The conventional subject matter allowed the artist to experiment with style and twist pictorial tradition. Examples of other floral works from this period are in such major public institutions as Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (‘Bunch of Flowers’, c.1909) and Musée d’Orsay (‘Bouquet de pavots’, 1914).