.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
In 1931 Braque moved into a house at Varengeville, near Dieppe that had been specially designed and built for him in the traditional Norman style and in which he was to spend much of the rest of his life. Les Baigneuses is one of a unique series of beach scenes painted immediately after Braque moved to Varengeville and depicts an idyllic lunch for two on the beach near his new home.
Using an almost continuous febrile line, Braque has articulated the forms of this large and imposing canvas into a descriptive spatial unity with the barest of means. The almost classical composition is held tentatively together only by the meandering contours of Braque's remarkable line and by the soft muted colours that have been washed onto the canvas with thinned oil and layered in a collage-like way into a subtle but persuasive unity.
Braque's sinuous line during this period is without parallel. Though perhaps originally inspired towards such abstract linearity by his old friend Picasso's work of 1928-9, Braque developed this looping and flowing form of drawing into a unique style all of his own. First observable in his work in 1929 this flamboyant drawing style reaches its zenith in his paintings of 1931 and in a remarkable series of etchings executed for Ambroise Vollard that depict scenes from Hesiod's Theogony.
Having read Hesiod's Theogony with what he described as," total admiration, finding it more interesting than Aeschylus or Sophocles", Braque became preoccupied with Vollard's commission throughout 1931 and this preoccupation can also be witnessed in Les Baigneuses. Greatly inspired by the culture of Ancient Greece throughout his life, the classicism which had always pervaded Braque's aesthetic is intensifeid in Les Baigneuses by the elegant simplicity of the forms, the refined and carefully orchestrated composition and the muted frecso-like colours. As has often been observed in Picasso's beach scenes and depictions of the mediterranean, the subject of the beach and the sea seemed to bring out an inherent classicism from within the artist and the same has also been said of Braque. The primary difference between these two great artists' beach paintings is ultimately geographic. Picasso's work displays the bright intensive colours of the mediterranean sun of Golfe Juan and Antibes while more often than not, as in Les Baigneuses, Braque's paintings reflect the more earthy and sombre colouring of the Normandy coastline where Braque had chosen to make his home.
Using an almost continuous febrile line, Braque has articulated the forms of this large and imposing canvas into a descriptive spatial unity with the barest of means. The almost classical composition is held tentatively together only by the meandering contours of Braque's remarkable line and by the soft muted colours that have been washed onto the canvas with thinned oil and layered in a collage-like way into a subtle but persuasive unity.
Braque's sinuous line during this period is without parallel. Though perhaps originally inspired towards such abstract linearity by his old friend Picasso's work of 1928-9, Braque developed this looping and flowing form of drawing into a unique style all of his own. First observable in his work in 1929 this flamboyant drawing style reaches its zenith in his paintings of 1931 and in a remarkable series of etchings executed for Ambroise Vollard that depict scenes from Hesiod's Theogony.
Having read Hesiod's Theogony with what he described as," total admiration, finding it more interesting than Aeschylus or Sophocles", Braque became preoccupied with Vollard's commission throughout 1931 and this preoccupation can also be witnessed in Les Baigneuses. Greatly inspired by the culture of Ancient Greece throughout his life, the classicism which had always pervaded Braque's aesthetic is intensifeid in Les Baigneuses by the elegant simplicity of the forms, the refined and carefully orchestrated composition and the muted frecso-like colours. As has often been observed in Picasso's beach scenes and depictions of the mediterranean, the subject of the beach and the sea seemed to bring out an inherent classicism from within the artist and the same has also been said of Braque. The primary difference between these two great artists' beach paintings is ultimately geographic. Picasso's work displays the bright intensive colours of the mediterranean sun of Golfe Juan and Antibes while more often than not, as in Les Baigneuses, Braque's paintings reflect the more earthy and sombre colouring of the Normandy coastline where Braque had chosen to make his home.