Georges Braque

Dr J. Heijligers, Rotterdam (acquired by 1945)
Fred Mendl, London (acquired by 1956)
Hanover Galleries, London
Sale: Christie's, New York, 14th May 1986, lot 38
Purchased at the above sale by the father of the present owner

Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, D'œuvres récentes de Georges Braque, 1936, no. 15
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Georges Braque, 1945, no. 3 (titled Nature Morte au Bol)
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Georges Braque, 1953, no. 89 (titled Nature morte)
Edinburgh, The Royal Scottish Academy & London, Tate Gallery, Georges Braque, 1956, no. 64, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Still-life with Two Peaches and as dating from 1929-30)
New Orleans, Museum of Fine Art, New Orleans Collects, 1971-72, no. 10, illustrated in the catalogue

Galerie Maeght (ed.), Catalogue de l'œuvre de Georges Braque, peintures 1928-1935, Paris, 1962, illustrated pl. 113

The canvas is lined and there is also an additional loose dust lining. UV examination reveals intermittent spots of retouching along the upper framing edge, a 23cm-long thin vertical line of retouching running through the white and yellow areas on the right, and a few small scattered spots and lines of retouching, mainly to the central vertical section. There are some fine vertical lines of craquelure in places. Otherwise, this work is in overall good condition. Colours: overall fairly accurate, though slightly less pink in the original when compared with the printed catalogue.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Executed in 1935, Verre, Fruits et Couteau is an example of Braque's continued fascination with still-life, the genre that dominated his work from the Cubist period onwards. With the development of synthetic Cubism, the artist had discovered that he could begin a painting – nearly always a still-life on a table – by composing it with purely pictorial elements, such as shaped forms and planes of colour, and gradually endow them with an objective significance as his composition progressed. Typically, pigment is applied quite thickly and in broad brushstrokes and paint is used to achieve texture as well as colour. In the present work, the soft, curved shapes of the glass, fruit and plate stand in contrast to the strong vertical and horizontal lines that describe the table and the background. The tilted table and pieces of fruit that appear to defy gravity can be seen as Braque’s homage to Cézanne, whose still-lifes played such an important role in the development of modern painting.

Throughout the 1920s, Braque had aligned himself with the French cultural movement that Jean Cocteau described as le rappel à l’ordre, a revival of Neo-Classicism and an appreciation of traditional values. His still-lives of that period were mostly horizontal in format and subdued in colour. In the 1930s, however, a significant change occurred. As described by Jean Leymarie, ‘Braque abandons naturalistic depiction and the sensitive painterly element so as to make visible the picture’s structure, its framework, which is no longer restricted to the narrowly delimited pictorial plane but reaches far into space. In addition, his palette, which for the last ten years has been dominated by dark tones of green, grey and black, is relieved by light colours’ (J. Leymarie, Georges Braque (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1988, p. 27). In Verre, fruits et couteau Braque has juxtaposed the brighter and more neutral tones in order to distinguish the still-life objects and the table cloth from the background, and the faux-bois and wallpaper-like patterns behind the table recall the technique of papier collé, a technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso in developping the Cubist aesthetic.