Georges Braque

From an Important European Collection

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Les Bijoux de Braque, March – April 1963, under the name 'Eos IV'

Nîmes, Musée de Nîmes, 1970

Nancy, Musée des Beaux Arts, 1973

Milan, Museo Fondazione Luciana Matalon, Georges Braque - Métamorphoses, October 7 – November 26, 2005

Georges Braque: Les Metamorphoses, May 18, 1999, Etude Tajan, Paris, 1999, lot 80, p. 34, similar ring

Georges Braque: ‘Les Métamorphoses,’ Millon & Associés, Paris, 2006, p. 46

Georges Braque’s diamond-paved Zéphyr ring depicts a bird wheeling around in the sky, forever in flight, with one eye of ruby. In collaboration with the lapidarist Baron Heger de Loewenfeld, he translated drawings and gouaches based on Greek mythology into wearable art and jewelry. The Greek god Zephyrus is a gentle soul, a herald of spring and the lord of the west winds. Braque may have seen a happy message in his story of bleak winter being eventually tempered by the warmth and new growth of spring.