Georges Braque

Neue Kunst Hans Goltz, Munich

Galerie Flechtheim, Berlin

Pierre Matisse, New York (acquired circa 1938-39)

Acquired from the above in March 1939

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Leslie M. Maitland, 1939, no. 6

Los Angeles, University of California Los Angeles Art Galleries, Ruth McClymonds Maitland Collection, 1959

Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1980 (long-term loan) 

George Isarlov, Georges Braque, Paris, 1932, no. 239, listed p. 21

Fritz Laufer, Braque, Bern, 1954, illustrated pl. 18

Maeght (ed.), Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Georges Braque, Peintures 1916-1923, Paris, 1962, no. 61, illustrated

After his service in the First World War, Braque returned to his art by 1917 with a renewed sense of exploration and possibility. While continuing the geometric abstraction of Cubism which he had invented with his colleague Picasso prior to the war, Braque began to create richer and more vivid surfaces for his paintings during this time. By priming his canvases with a black ground, the artist created a dramatic contrast that outlines the subjects of his paintings. The still-lifes of this period in particular are punctuated by powerful contrasts that instill the inanimate objects with vibrant color. The present picture, Le Radical, painted in 1919, falls within this prolific and inventive period. Braque here translates a horizontal surface into a vertical field. Though the subject is expertly abstracted, the viewer is still able to visually reconstruct elements, such as a cluster of fruit, a patterned table surface, and the cover of Le Radical, the left-wing French periodical.

In 1939, the gallery owner Pierre Matisse sent the present piece to Mrs. Maitland with the following note regarding its significance: "I have sent you the Braque still life I mentioned in my wire and I hope you will like it.  It is the only example of that period, one of the very best, that I have found for a long time.  The colors are cool and deep and there is a gravity about the whole picture which is very satisfying.  The composition is also quiet and pleasing.  In all I think it is a picture that will hold and in which one will always find something new to enjoy" (Pierre Matisse, letter to Mrs. Maitland dated March 23, 1939).