Lot Essay
Georges Braque painted this work in the autumn of 1906 in the Mediterranean village of L'Estaque, near Marseille. He had become involved with the Fauve painters after their display of works at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, and during the spring and summer of 1906 began to adopt their palette and technique. The Fauves or "wild beasts" (principally Braque, Matisse, Vlaminck and Derain, with other adherents such as Marquet, Manguin and Valtat) chose to depict conventional subjects, often popular landscape motifs, in intense primary and secondary colors applied in small patches. It was a revolutionary style; in the words of Vlaminck:
I wanted to burn down the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with my cobalts and vermillions and I wanted to express my feelings with my brushes... Life and me, me and life. (Quoted in J. Freeman, op. cit., p. 21)
The present painting comes at the height of Braque's Fauvist inventions and is a fine example of the group of works painted during 1906. With its vibrant palette and brilliant light, it is typical of the best canvases which Braque executed first at Antwerp and later at L'Estaque and La Ciotat: pictures which are "instinctive and decorative...elegant, allusive, paradoxical and sun-drenched," as critic Denys Sutton described the art of the Fauves (D. Sutton, André Derain, London, 1959, p. 20). Braque himself would later comment about his Fauve experience of 1906 and 1907:
For me Fauvism was a momentary adventure in which I became involved because I was young... I was freed from the studios, only twenty-four, and full of enthusiasm. I moved toward what for me represented novelty and joy, toward Fauvism... Just think I had only recently left the dark, dismal Paris studios where they still painted with a pitch! (Quoted in M. Rosenthal, exh. cat., The Annenberg Collection, Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1989, p. 116)
Like most of the Fauve group, Braque painted out-of-doors; he frequently set up his easel alongside Othon Friesz, a fellow artist from Le Havre, the two artists painting side-by-side from congenial motifs, many of which had been painted before by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. During the summer of 1906, Braque and Friesz first worked together in Le Havre, and then traveled to Antwerp. In the Belgian port Braque painted more than a dozen canvases which used the new colors and the strong linear organization of Fauvism. He regarded the Antwerp pictures as the beginning of his truly creative work, and destroyed many of his earlier pictures. Judi Freeman noted that in Antwerp:
Braque gravitated toward the juxtaposition of intensely colored brushstrokes, moving beyond the harmonious contrasts present in so much Impressionist painting. The intensity of his palette gradually increased during his three-month stay, becoming divorced from naturalistic depictions of objects and surfaces. (J. Freeman, op. cit., p. 207)
A month later Braque and Friesz moved from the gray and unsympathetic light of Antwerp to the brilliance of Provence. Braque told Jacques Lassaigne that he had traveled to Provence because of an idea that he already had in mind:
I can say that the first pictures in L'Estaque were conceived before I set out. I set myself, nevertheless, to submit them to the influences of the light, of the atmosphere, and to the effect of the rain which enlivened the colours. (Quoted in P. Daix and D. Vallier, Georges Braque, Rétrospective, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1994, p. 42)
Derain, who was also in L'Estaque at the time, wrote to Vlaminck, "Friesz, Braque are very happy. Their idea [about painting] is youthful and seems new to them" (quoted in J. Freeman, op. cit., p. 96).
Braque was drawn to L'Estaque in part because it was the site of some of Cézanne's most beautiful and characteristic landscapes. It is probably no accident, therefore, that the present picture structurally resembles views by Cézanne of the bay (fig. 1). Braque returned to L'Estaque in September 1907 and it was there that he began the transition from Fauvism to Cubism, painting such revolutionary works as Arbres (fig. 2), a canvas that is both Cézannesque and prophetic. Braque's Paysage à L'Estaque and the other Fauvist pictures he made there thus form one of the key chapters in the evolution of early Modern art.
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, L'Estaque vu à travers les arbres, 1878-1879
Private Collection (Christie's, New York, May 14, 1997)
(fig. 2) Georges Braque, Arbres, 1908
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
I wanted to burn down the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with my cobalts and vermillions and I wanted to express my feelings with my brushes... Life and me, me and life. (Quoted in J. Freeman, op. cit., p. 21)
The present painting comes at the height of Braque's Fauvist inventions and is a fine example of the group of works painted during 1906. With its vibrant palette and brilliant light, it is typical of the best canvases which Braque executed first at Antwerp and later at L'Estaque and La Ciotat: pictures which are "instinctive and decorative...elegant, allusive, paradoxical and sun-drenched," as critic Denys Sutton described the art of the Fauves (D. Sutton, André Derain, London, 1959, p. 20). Braque himself would later comment about his Fauve experience of 1906 and 1907:
For me Fauvism was a momentary adventure in which I became involved because I was young... I was freed from the studios, only twenty-four, and full of enthusiasm. I moved toward what for me represented novelty and joy, toward Fauvism... Just think I had only recently left the dark, dismal Paris studios where they still painted with a pitch! (Quoted in M. Rosenthal, exh. cat., The Annenberg Collection, Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1989, p. 116)
Like most of the Fauve group, Braque painted out-of-doors; he frequently set up his easel alongside Othon Friesz, a fellow artist from Le Havre, the two artists painting side-by-side from congenial motifs, many of which had been painted before by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. During the summer of 1906, Braque and Friesz first worked together in Le Havre, and then traveled to Antwerp. In the Belgian port Braque painted more than a dozen canvases which used the new colors and the strong linear organization of Fauvism. He regarded the Antwerp pictures as the beginning of his truly creative work, and destroyed many of his earlier pictures. Judi Freeman noted that in Antwerp:
Braque gravitated toward the juxtaposition of intensely colored brushstrokes, moving beyond the harmonious contrasts present in so much Impressionist painting. The intensity of his palette gradually increased during his three-month stay, becoming divorced from naturalistic depictions of objects and surfaces. (J. Freeman, op. cit., p. 207)
A month later Braque and Friesz moved from the gray and unsympathetic light of Antwerp to the brilliance of Provence. Braque told Jacques Lassaigne that he had traveled to Provence because of an idea that he already had in mind:
I can say that the first pictures in L'Estaque were conceived before I set out. I set myself, nevertheless, to submit them to the influences of the light, of the atmosphere, and to the effect of the rain which enlivened the colours. (Quoted in P. Daix and D. Vallier, Georges Braque, Rétrospective, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1994, p. 42)
Derain, who was also in L'Estaque at the time, wrote to Vlaminck, "Friesz, Braque are very happy. Their idea [about painting] is youthful and seems new to them" (quoted in J. Freeman, op. cit., p. 96).
Braque was drawn to L'Estaque in part because it was the site of some of Cézanne's most beautiful and characteristic landscapes. It is probably no accident, therefore, that the present picture structurally resembles views by Cézanne of the bay (fig. 1). Braque returned to L'Estaque in September 1907 and it was there that he began the transition from Fauvism to Cubism, painting such revolutionary works as Arbres (fig. 2), a canvas that is both Cézannesque and prophetic. Braque's Paysage à L'Estaque and the other Fauvist pictures he made there thus form one of the key chapters in the evolution of early Modern art.
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, L'Estaque vu à travers les arbres, 1878-1879
Private Collection (Christie's, New York, May 14, 1997)
(fig. 2) Georges Braque, Arbres, 1908
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen