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Lot Essay
Femme assise is an imposing painting from an important series of monumental female nudes that Braque painted between 1922 and 1926. Originating with two epic paintings known as the Canephora of 1922, Braque reintroduced the human figure into his work in an extremely bold and sensual way. His striking and powerful female nudes of these years represent the full flowering of a latent classicism that had always existed in his art, but they were also Braque's ultimate statement on the gentle eroticism of the female form.
The dramatic change in Braque's subject matter in 1922 was almost certainly inspired by an important exhibition of the work of Auguste Renoir at the Salon d'Automne in 1920. This heavily attended exhibition included many of Renoir's finest paintings of female bathers (see fig. 1). Braque's old comrade Picasso responded to the Renoir exhibition with a series of bathing women and by adopting a highly classical style of representing the female form that is now considered to be one of the principal stimuli for a 'return to order' that became a prevalent undercurrent in French art during the 1920s. Picasso transformed Renoir's fleshy bathers into solid statuesque-looking maidens with Greco-Roman features and a distinctly architectural sense of monumentality (see fig. 2). In contrast, Braque's approach was more delicate, subtle and sensuous, less sculptural but ultimately more painterly.
Femme assise is one of the finest examples from this remarkable series. Using deliberately muted, earthy and soft colours, which lend the work a fresco-like appearance deliberately evocative of the mural painting of classical antiquity, the emphasis in this painting is especially on the fertile bounty of nature and of women's mystic connection to earth. The voluptuous forms of his highly material female figures are delineated with the lightest of brushstrokes and a sensitivity that endows their ample forms with a sensuality and a gentle eroticism that, though reminiscent of Renoir, is wholly absent in Picasso's stone-like maidens.
The dramatic change in Braque's subject matter in 1922 was almost certainly inspired by an important exhibition of the work of Auguste Renoir at the Salon d'Automne in 1920. This heavily attended exhibition included many of Renoir's finest paintings of female bathers (see fig. 1). Braque's old comrade Picasso responded to the Renoir exhibition with a series of bathing women and by adopting a highly classical style of representing the female form that is now considered to be one of the principal stimuli for a 'return to order' that became a prevalent undercurrent in French art during the 1920s. Picasso transformed Renoir's fleshy bathers into solid statuesque-looking maidens with Greco-Roman features and a distinctly architectural sense of monumentality (see fig. 2). In contrast, Braque's approach was more delicate, subtle and sensuous, less sculptural but ultimately more painterly.
Femme assise is one of the finest examples from this remarkable series. Using deliberately muted, earthy and soft colours, which lend the work a fresco-like appearance deliberately evocative of the mural painting of classical antiquity, the emphasis in this painting is especially on the fertile bounty of nature and of women's mystic connection to earth. The voluptuous forms of his highly material female figures are delineated with the lightest of brushstrokes and a sensitivity that endows their ample forms with a sensuality and a gentle eroticism that, though reminiscent of Renoir, is wholly absent in Picasso's stone-like maidens.