Georges Braque

Mrs. Millard Waldheim, Saint Louis

M. Knoedler & Co., New York

Acquired from the above December 1, 1959

Paris, Salon d'Automne, Ensemble d'oeuvres récentes de Georges Braque, 1943, no. 1796

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Braque, 1945, no. 3

New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture collected by Yale Alumni, 1960, no. 94

New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Inc., Georges Braque, An American Tribute, The Late Years (1940-63) and the Sculpture, 1964, no. 13

Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1940-44, illustrated p. 102

Henry R. Hope, Georges Braque, New York, 1949, illustrated p. 146 (with incorrect provenance)

"Georges Braque," Le Point, Paris, 1953, illustrated p. 8

Maeght (ed.), Catalogue de l'Oeuvre de Georges Braque, 1942-1947, 1960, Paris, no. 39, illustrated (titled La Nappe verte)

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 closely related to another 1943 painting entitled Le Tapis Vert (Maeght, no. 43, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris).  In both compositions, the objects are set on a dark table plane with a notched front edge set against a sectioned white background which appears to be a tiled kitchen wall.  While the Paris painting shows the table in dark tones of black and green with little elaboration, in the Ford still life Braque devotes much greater attention to the decorative elements of the table: the wood graining along the top and the repeating heart shapes along the edges.  The same focus is applied to the vase and the floral arrangement it contains.  In contrast to the relatively evenly applied dark pigments of the table, the background surface is remarkably rich and articulated.  The material presence of the paint which projects off the canvas surface creates a lively tension with our perception of the background tiles as set well behind the table.