Lot Essay
For the first time since 1905, Braque spent part of the summer of 1929 on the Normandy coast where he had been brought up and had lived as a young man. His return to Normandy was propitious, for it signalled a renewed interest in landscape (he had not tackled a landscape since Céret in 1911), and a new receptivity to the light and colour of the countryside, banished from his paintings since the early Cubist days.
The moist silvery light of the Normandy coast, its cliffs, broad beaches and clear horizons which had meant so much to Boudin and Monet, now began to exert their appeal on Braque - and he executed a whole series of evocative coastal views of Normandy from 1929 onwards.
The moist silvery light of the Normandy coast, its cliffs, broad beaches and clear horizons which had meant so much to Boudin and Monet, now began to exert their appeal on Braque - and he executed a whole series of evocative coastal views of Normandy from 1929 onwards.