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Lot Essay
Painted during a period of fervent creative development for Georges Braque, La Ciotat is a rare Fauvist composition, dating from the summer months of 1907. Braque had initially encountered the revolutionary approach to painting advocated by the Fauves—the daring group of artists spearheaded by Henri Matisse and André Derain—during a visit to the infamous Salon d’Automne in 1905. He was immediately struck by the vigor of their approach, the purity of their colors, and their daring departure from conventional rules of perspective. Over the following two years, Braque explored their pictorial language intensively, adopting a vibrant, non-naturalistic approach to color that completely transformed his view of the world. In La Ciotat, Braque uses the Fauvist language to capture a bold view of the countryside along the Mediterranean coast, each stroke of saturated, unmodulated pigment exuding a raw power and energy that simultaneously conjures the intense heat and light of the Midi, and Braque’s own instinctive response to the landscape in this quiet corner of the South of France.
Braque first visited the Côte d’Azur in the fall of 1906, traveling to the small fishing-port of L’Estaque, near Marseille. Up until this point, the artist—who was born in Argenteuil and grew up in Le Havre, on the north Atlantic coastline—had never ventured further south than Paris, and his only impressions of the Midi came from the vibrant canvases of Collioure that Matisse and Derain had painted the previous year. His arrival in L’Estaque proved to be a true revelation for Braque, the rugged landscape, deep blue Mediterranean Sea, indigenous plant-life and striking, luminous light capturing his imagination instantly. “It’s there that I felt all the elation, all the joy, welling up inside me,” he later explained. “Just imagine, I left the drab, gloomy Paris studios where you were still working in bitumen. There, by contrast, what a revelation, what a blossoming!” (quoted in A. Danchev, Georges Braque: A Life, London, 2005, p. 41).
While he later admitted that he had been planning to paint particular motifs on his arrival, saying “my first paintings of L’Estaque were conceived before my departure,” the experience of working en plein air, under the blazing sunlight and within the unique atmosphere of the south, dramatically altered Braque’s vision. “I took great care… to place [my paintings] under the influence of the light, the atmosphere, and the reviving effect of the rain on the colors,” he explained (quoted in ibid., p. 41). The resulting canvases were infused with glowing, incandescent color, the verdant landscapes and panoramic vistas ignited with shades of bright pink, yellow, orange, turquoise, and purple, applied in strong, expressive brushwork, that switched between long, sinuous strokes and short, staccato dashes.
Braque spent several months toiling away in L’Estaque, before briefly returning to Paris in the spring of 1907 for the Salon des Indépendants, where he exhibited a group of his recent Fauvist paintings, each of which found a buyer. Bolstered by this success, the artist was lured to the south again in June, this time venturing further eastwards along the coast to settle in the small town of La Ciotat, which was well-known for its ship building industry. Paying particular interest to the rolling, volcanic cliffs and secluded coves, known as calanques, that sat on the outskirts of town, the paintings Braque worked on that summer are marked by a growing interest in the construction of pictorial space. As the artist later recalled: “I realized that the exaltation which had overwhelmed me during my first visit [to the Midi] and which I had transmitted onto canvas was no longer the same. I saw that there was something further. I had to cast around for another means of self-expression more in keeping with my nature” (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917: The Painter of Modern Life, London, 2009, vol. II, p. 68).
Painted during this pivotal summer, La Ciotat powerfully illustrates the development of these dual interests in Braque’s style at this time, marrying his bold coloristic vocabulary with a stronger sense of structure and space. Stepping away from the purely perceptive, expressive reaction to the landscape, Braque now also focused on the placement of elements within his scene, meditating on their relationship to one another and the ways in which subtle adjustments and visual connections could alter the overall compositional effect. Here, the view is constructed in a series of distinctive layers, progressing from the short wall in the immediate foreground, through the sweeping hillside, to the azure blue of the bay, and the sky in the distance, executed in short, tesserae-like touches of pure color. Braque used the traditional framing device of a verdant tree in the foreground to enhance this sense of depth, its bushy leaves and twisting branches stretching into the frame from the right-hand side of the canvas in a sweeping arabesque, directing the eye towards the array of red-roofed buildings that fill the steeply sloping hillside.
Arranged in a diagonal line that runs from right to left, following the natural topography of the site, these buildings stand out among the tight mesh of vegetation that fills the incline. Outlined in strong, linear strokes of dark green and blue paint, their regular, geometric profiles offer an intriguing visual counterpoint to the repeated, undulating curves of organic forms within the landscape, which grant the scene a sinuous visual rhythm. In many ways, the construction and layering of the view is strongly reminiscent of Paul Cezanne’s celebrated series of paintings of L’Estaque, which would go on to have an enormous impact on Braque’s developing style through the remainder of 1907 and into the following year. Braque’s growing regard for the older artist’s work was galvanized by the posthumous retrospective dedicated to Cezanne at the Salon d’Automne that October and, from this point onwards, his landscapes began to favor more angular, geometric forms, paving the way for his early cubist compositions. In La Ciotat, the first seeds of this important shift were just starting to take root, infiltrating Braque’s vigorous, vibrant depiction of the Mediterranean landscape with a new sense of refinement and order.
Braque first visited the Côte d’Azur in the fall of 1906, traveling to the small fishing-port of L’Estaque, near Marseille. Up until this point, the artist—who was born in Argenteuil and grew up in Le Havre, on the north Atlantic coastline—had never ventured further south than Paris, and his only impressions of the Midi came from the vibrant canvases of Collioure that Matisse and Derain had painted the previous year. His arrival in L’Estaque proved to be a true revelation for Braque, the rugged landscape, deep blue Mediterranean Sea, indigenous plant-life and striking, luminous light capturing his imagination instantly. “It’s there that I felt all the elation, all the joy, welling up inside me,” he later explained. “Just imagine, I left the drab, gloomy Paris studios where you were still working in bitumen. There, by contrast, what a revelation, what a blossoming!” (quoted in A. Danchev, Georges Braque: A Life, London, 2005, p. 41).
While he later admitted that he had been planning to paint particular motifs on his arrival, saying “my first paintings of L’Estaque were conceived before my departure,” the experience of working en plein air, under the blazing sunlight and within the unique atmosphere of the south, dramatically altered Braque’s vision. “I took great care… to place [my paintings] under the influence of the light, the atmosphere, and the reviving effect of the rain on the colors,” he explained (quoted in ibid., p. 41). The resulting canvases were infused with glowing, incandescent color, the verdant landscapes and panoramic vistas ignited with shades of bright pink, yellow, orange, turquoise, and purple, applied in strong, expressive brushwork, that switched between long, sinuous strokes and short, staccato dashes.
Braque spent several months toiling away in L’Estaque, before briefly returning to Paris in the spring of 1907 for the Salon des Indépendants, where he exhibited a group of his recent Fauvist paintings, each of which found a buyer. Bolstered by this success, the artist was lured to the south again in June, this time venturing further eastwards along the coast to settle in the small town of La Ciotat, which was well-known for its ship building industry. Paying particular interest to the rolling, volcanic cliffs and secluded coves, known as calanques, that sat on the outskirts of town, the paintings Braque worked on that summer are marked by a growing interest in the construction of pictorial space. As the artist later recalled: “I realized that the exaltation which had overwhelmed me during my first visit [to the Midi] and which I had transmitted onto canvas was no longer the same. I saw that there was something further. I had to cast around for another means of self-expression more in keeping with my nature” (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917: The Painter of Modern Life, London, 2009, vol. II, p. 68).
Painted during this pivotal summer, La Ciotat powerfully illustrates the development of these dual interests in Braque’s style at this time, marrying his bold coloristic vocabulary with a stronger sense of structure and space. Stepping away from the purely perceptive, expressive reaction to the landscape, Braque now also focused on the placement of elements within his scene, meditating on their relationship to one another and the ways in which subtle adjustments and visual connections could alter the overall compositional effect. Here, the view is constructed in a series of distinctive layers, progressing from the short wall in the immediate foreground, through the sweeping hillside, to the azure blue of the bay, and the sky in the distance, executed in short, tesserae-like touches of pure color. Braque used the traditional framing device of a verdant tree in the foreground to enhance this sense of depth, its bushy leaves and twisting branches stretching into the frame from the right-hand side of the canvas in a sweeping arabesque, directing the eye towards the array of red-roofed buildings that fill the steeply sloping hillside.
Arranged in a diagonal line that runs from right to left, following the natural topography of the site, these buildings stand out among the tight mesh of vegetation that fills the incline. Outlined in strong, linear strokes of dark green and blue paint, their regular, geometric profiles offer an intriguing visual counterpoint to the repeated, undulating curves of organic forms within the landscape, which grant the scene a sinuous visual rhythm. In many ways, the construction and layering of the view is strongly reminiscent of Paul Cezanne’s celebrated series of paintings of L’Estaque, which would go on to have an enormous impact on Braque’s developing style through the remainder of 1907 and into the following year. Braque’s growing regard for the older artist’s work was galvanized by the posthumous retrospective dedicated to Cezanne at the Salon d’Automne that October and, from this point onwards, his landscapes began to favor more angular, geometric forms, paving the way for his early cubist compositions. In La Ciotat, the first seeds of this important shift were just starting to take root, infiltrating Braque’s vigorous, vibrant depiction of the Mediterranean landscape with a new sense of refinement and order.