The still life was a theme to which Braque returned consistently throughout his long and productive career. In every phase, beginning with Cubism 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. In the decades following the invention of Cubism, Braque continued to refine and re-examine the expressive possibilities of his still lifes, always creating innovative ways to represent common objects.

The anemones found in the present work were especially conducive to his exploration of textures and space. Henry Hope explains that “a low key and dense quality is found in the flower paintings of the twenties... At that time, he nearly always used anemones, probably because their variety of color and simple shape suited his pictorial needs...the flowers, foliage and basket are painted in the closest harmony. Braque reduces the bright color of the flowers to dull pink and violet so that nothing will be out of place” (Henry Hope, Georges Braque, New York, 1949, pp. 100-02).

As early as 1912, Braque brought what he termed “materiality” to his work by transforming the texture of his paint as he incorporated different tactile elements such as sawdust, iron shavings and sand, as incorporated in the present work. The artist himself later stated, “what I liked a lot was indeed that ‘materiality’ yielded by different material that I kept bringing into my paintings. In fact it was for me, a means of being further and further away from the idealistic painting… and closer to the sort of representation of things that I was looking for” (quoted in Karen Wilkin, Modern Masters: Georges Braque, New York, 1991, pp. 65-66).