Délices de l'Après-Midi is a still life arranged on a pale, cloth-covered table. At the centre a shallow footed dish holds rows of pale finger biscuits, resembling sponge fingers, stacked in overlapping layers. Behind the dish a patterned cloth is folded back, red with a white motif and a blue underside. To the upper right stands a glazed ceramic jug with a domed, knobbed lid and a curved handle, worked in cool whites, greys and greens. Three or four apples in red and yellow-green are grouped at the lower right, set directly on the cloth. The background is built up in mottled ochre, olive, mauve and purple, suggesting a patterned hanging behind the table. Guillaumin applies the paint in thick, short strokes of strong, largely unmixed colour, setting the red and blue cloth against the warm background and the cool tablecloth. The canvas is signed lower right.

Still-life subjects appear across the career of Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927) alongside the Creuse and Parisian landscapes for which he is best known. An original member of the Impressionist group, who met Cézanne and Pissarro at the Académie Suisse, Guillaumin intensified his palette from the 1880s in response to Post-Impressionism, and his still lifes of fruit and tableware show an awareness of Cézanne's example. The strong, high-keyed colour seen here is typical of his work throughout his life.