Georges Braque

A Charitable Organization for Soviet Children Victims of the War 
Marcel Mabille, Brussels (by 1947)
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, May 12, 1987, lot 393
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (by 1999)
Sale: Christie's, New York, May 10, 2001, lot 441
Galerie Patrice Trigano, Paris
Acquired from the above in 2002

Paris, Salon d'Automne, 1943, no. 1784 (titled La table de toilette)
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum and Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Georges Braque, 1945, no. 19, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Toilette)
Brussels, Galerie Georges Giroux, Exposition d'art Francais Contemporain, 1947, no. 11 (titled La toilette devant la fenêtre)
Brussels, Galerie Georges Giroux, Exposition de l'art vivant les collections privées Belges, 1947, no. 8
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne, L'Ecole de Paris dans les Collections Belges, 1959, no. 22 (titled Toilette devant la fenêtre)
New York, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Georges Braque, 1999, no. 18

Germain Bazin, "George Braque", in Labyrinthe, no. 4, January 1945, illustrated in a photograph of the artist's studio in 1943 p. 2
Galerie Maeght, ed., Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Georges Braque, peintures 1942-1947, Paris, 1960, p. 14, illustrated

The still-life was a theme to which Braque returned consistently throughout his long and productive career. In every phase, beginning with the Fauve period and culminating in the majestic interiors of his last years, Braque found the arrangement of a limited number of objects on a table-top or in an interior to be the most appropriate subject for his investigations of the formal and tactile qualities of painting.

The present work is a superb example of Braque's 1940s still-lifes. While it grows out of his experiments with Cubism between 1907 and 1914, it also heralds the wonderful Atelier series which the artist was to undertake in 1949. As Braque himself commented: "without having striven for it, I do in fact end by changing the meaning of objects and giving them a pictorial significance which is adequate to their new life. When I paint a vase, it is not with the intention of painting a utensil capable of holding water. It is for quite other reasons [...] As they give up their habitual function, so object acquire a human harmony. Then they become united by the relationships which sprung up between them and more important between them and the picture and ultimately myself"(quoted in D. Cooper, Braque, The Great Years, Chicago, 1972, p.111).