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Lot Essay
Braque's still-life and interior paintings of the late 1930s have been regarded as the most complexly conceived and beautifully rendered compositions that the artist had created since his cubist period more than two decades earlier. John Golding has stated, "At the time of the outbreak of the Second World War [September 1939] Braque was at the zenith of his maturity and had attained international recognition as one of the greatest living French artists. The still-lifes executed in the second half of the 1930s are among the fullest and most sumptuous in the entire French canon. Simultaneously Braque was enlarging his iconographic range by producing a series of interiors furnished with still-lifes, many of which refer to attributes of the painter's studio--easels and palettes proliferate--and also frequently by human figures or presences" (in Braque: The Late Works, exh. cat., The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997, p. 1).
In Femme au pinceau and other works of this period, Braque displayed his mastery at orchestrating a virtual pictorial symphony, a canvas brimming with themes, in which the figure and still-life elements dovetail like polyphonic layers of melody. Each object is distinct and significant in itself, as in a Chardin still-life, and all contribute to a richly satisfying whole, a modern counterpart to a Vermeer interior. Braque's angled and overlapping planes derive from cubist practice, and instill a sense of order amid the profusion of objects, bearing them up like tectonic plates.
Braque featured the female figure, normally in the role of a femme peintre or model, in periodic sequences of paintings during the late 1930s. Her presence is allegorical: she is the embodiment of the creative act. Femme au pinceau marks the conclusion of one such series, which Braque commenced in early 1939 with the painting Le peintre et son modèle, and continued with Le modèle (Maeght, Peintures 1936-1941, nos. 52 and 53). She appears one last time in the present painting. She is the femme peintre; her hand, holding a brush, is visible at the lower center edge. Braque has given her the profile of a goddess from a painted antique Greek vase. Only the outlines of her features are visible; she is otherwise practically transparent, like an apparition, a lovely fading dream. In the subsequent studio interiors that Braque completed in the anxious months before the beginning of the war in September 1939, such as L'atelier (au tabouret) (fig. 1), this female presence disappeared altogether, like a muse having taken flight. She remained absent from Braque's work until she returned as the card-playing avatar of fate in La patience, 1942 (Maeght, Peintures 1942-1947, no. 1).
Still-life elements dominate the composition in Femme au pinceau. Rather than describing the objects he has selected, Braque treats them as signs, as visual metaphors for his creative life. Edward Mullins has written,
What is clear from these series of the late '30s is that Braque's work was growing cryptically personal. It was also becoming less literal in its presentation of material things. Braque's world had always been one of objects, in particular objects close enough to touch. Henceforth, a metaphysical note was sound increasingly loud in Braque's painting, for the first time images appear which either have no material existence, or else they have become detached sufficiently from that material role to introduce ideas that dwell outside the physical boundaries of Braque's theme. The introduction during the late '30s of this metaphysical element into Braque's material world ranks as the second momentous innovation of his career (the first being his contribution to Cubism) and it paves the way for that series of noble and mysterious still-lifes, in some respects the summit of Braque's achievements, the [post-war] Studio series" (in Braque, London, 1968, pp. 135-136).
(fig. 1) Georges Braque, L'atelier (au tabouret), 1939. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. BARCODE 24771368
In Femme au pinceau and other works of this period, Braque displayed his mastery at orchestrating a virtual pictorial symphony, a canvas brimming with themes, in which the figure and still-life elements dovetail like polyphonic layers of melody. Each object is distinct and significant in itself, as in a Chardin still-life, and all contribute to a richly satisfying whole, a modern counterpart to a Vermeer interior. Braque's angled and overlapping planes derive from cubist practice, and instill a sense of order amid the profusion of objects, bearing them up like tectonic plates.
Braque featured the female figure, normally in the role of a femme peintre or model, in periodic sequences of paintings during the late 1930s. Her presence is allegorical: she is the embodiment of the creative act. Femme au pinceau marks the conclusion of one such series, which Braque commenced in early 1939 with the painting Le peintre et son modèle, and continued with Le modèle (Maeght, Peintures 1936-1941, nos. 52 and 53). She appears one last time in the present painting. She is the femme peintre; her hand, holding a brush, is visible at the lower center edge. Braque has given her the profile of a goddess from a painted antique Greek vase. Only the outlines of her features are visible; she is otherwise practically transparent, like an apparition, a lovely fading dream. In the subsequent studio interiors that Braque completed in the anxious months before the beginning of the war in September 1939, such as L'atelier (au tabouret) (fig. 1), this female presence disappeared altogether, like a muse having taken flight. She remained absent from Braque's work until she returned as the card-playing avatar of fate in La patience, 1942 (Maeght, Peintures 1942-1947, no. 1).
Still-life elements dominate the composition in Femme au pinceau. Rather than describing the objects he has selected, Braque treats them as signs, as visual metaphors for his creative life. Edward Mullins has written,
What is clear from these series of the late '30s is that Braque's work was growing cryptically personal. It was also becoming less literal in its presentation of material things. Braque's world had always been one of objects, in particular objects close enough to touch. Henceforth, a metaphysical note was sound increasingly loud in Braque's painting, for the first time images appear which either have no material existence, or else they have become detached sufficiently from that material role to introduce ideas that dwell outside the physical boundaries of Braque's theme. The introduction during the late '30s of this metaphysical element into Braque's material world ranks as the second momentous innovation of his career (the first being his contribution to Cubism) and it paves the way for that series of noble and mysterious still-lifes, in some respects the summit of Braque's achievements, the [post-war] Studio series" (in Braque, London, 1968, pp. 135-136).
(fig. 1) Georges Braque, L'atelier (au tabouret), 1939. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. BARCODE 24771368