拍品专文
In June of 1906, Braque left his hometown of Le Havre for the recently modernized port of Antwerp, settling with Emile-Othon Friesz in an inexpensive pension on the left bank of the river Scheldt. The two artists lived there until September, painting numerous views of the bustling docks and estuaries of the harbor town.
Over the course of the summer, Braque transformed his style of painting, trading the harmonious tonalities of the second-generation Impressionists for the jarring juxtapositions of intense color favored by the Fauves. With its vibrant palette and brilliant light, the present work is typical of the 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)
Over the course of the summer, Braque transformed his style of painting, trading the harmonious tonalities of the second-generation Impressionists for the jarring juxtapositions of intense color favored by the Fauves. With its vibrant palette and brilliant light, the present work is typical of the 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)