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Lot Essay
Braque was spending the spring in his country house in Varengeville, Normandy when the Germans invaded France in June 1940. He and his wife moved south and stayed first in the house of their maid's family in Limousin, and thereafter made their way along the refugee-clogged roads to the Pyrénées, near the Spanish border. They returned to Paris after France surrendered, and stayed in the house on the rue du Douanier which the architect Auguste Perret had designed and built for them in 1924.
Braque ceased painting during 1940, but resumed the following year. The somber and gravely beautiful still-life paintings of the war years reflect the thoughts of a quiet and meditative intellect in troubled times. Picasso similarly resorted to still-life painting during this period to encode his most private anxieties.
Rationing was instituted in May 1941, and shortages of all kinds developed in Paris. However, on his trips to Varengeville and from friends Braque could obtain fruit from the countryside. In contrast to the lavish still-lifes of the 1930s, the fare shown in the wartime paintings is often meager and their settings are appropriately austere. The complex spatial relationships of the prewar compositions yield to greater simplicity and naturalism. "More strongly redolent of the mood of war, and of conditions of Occupied Paris, is a group of stark interiors and still-lifes painted with a gloomy realism. Each canvas is stripped bare of decoration and ornament. Everything is depicted with a cold and unequivocal severity of line and colour, as if lyricism imagination even deserved no place in this climate of discomfort, and there were no songs to sing" (E. Mullins, Braque, London, 1968, p. 144).
La Desserte I is among the pictures that Braque painted early during the Occupation. The artist arranged on a table a compotier holding grapes and a pear; two more pears rest on a napkin placed to the left of a bottle of wine. The table is placed in front of a settee, whose carved scrolls form a simple arabesque over the composition and provide the only decoration in the composition. Executed in charcoal tones with dramatic white accents relieved only by the greenish tint in the fruits, the subject possesses a powerful, glowing intensity that recalls the devotional simplicity of the still-lifes of the 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran. Although Braque claimed that he did not attempt to inject symbolism into his still-life subjects, the modest arrangement of fruit and drink imparts a deeply poetic tone that transcends the humbleness of the objects themselves.
In a letter dated 19 June 1972, Madame Mangin wrote to Madame Gaffé:
...ce tableau étant un des deux tableaux de Braque à 'la desserte' qui ont encore été photographiés dans son atelier pendant la guerre et qu'il a datés pour le catalogue 1941. Je ne crois pas qu'il puisse y avoir d'erreur sur la date puisqu'elle vient de Braque lui-même et correspond à la numérotation faite par son photographe...
...painting was 'one of two' paintings that Braque painted on the subject of "the dessert", which were photographed in his studio during the war and that he dated 1941 for the catalogue. I do not think there is a problem regarding the date, as it came directly from Braque and corresponds to the numbering by the photographer.
Braque ceased painting during 1940, but resumed the following year. The somber and gravely beautiful still-life paintings of the war years reflect the thoughts of a quiet and meditative intellect in troubled times. Picasso similarly resorted to still-life painting during this period to encode his most private anxieties.
Rationing was instituted in May 1941, and shortages of all kinds developed in Paris. However, on his trips to Varengeville and from friends Braque could obtain fruit from the countryside. In contrast to the lavish still-lifes of the 1930s, the fare shown in the wartime paintings is often meager and their settings are appropriately austere. The complex spatial relationships of the prewar compositions yield to greater simplicity and naturalism. "More strongly redolent of the mood of war, and of conditions of Occupied Paris, is a group of stark interiors and still-lifes painted with a gloomy realism. Each canvas is stripped bare of decoration and ornament. Everything is depicted with a cold and unequivocal severity of line and colour, as if lyricism imagination even deserved no place in this climate of discomfort, and there were no songs to sing" (E. Mullins, Braque, London, 1968, p. 144).
La Desserte I is among the pictures that Braque painted early during the Occupation. The artist arranged on a table a compotier holding grapes and a pear; two more pears rest on a napkin placed to the left of a bottle of wine. The table is placed in front of a settee, whose carved scrolls form a simple arabesque over the composition and provide the only decoration in the composition. Executed in charcoal tones with dramatic white accents relieved only by the greenish tint in the fruits, the subject possesses a powerful, glowing intensity that recalls the devotional simplicity of the still-lifes of the 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran. Although Braque claimed that he did not attempt to inject symbolism into his still-life subjects, the modest arrangement of fruit and drink imparts a deeply poetic tone that transcends the humbleness of the objects themselves.
In a letter dated 19 June 1972, Madame Mangin wrote to Madame Gaffé:
...ce tableau étant un des deux tableaux de Braque à 'la desserte' qui ont encore été photographiés dans son atelier pendant la guerre et qu'il a datés pour le catalogue 1941. Je ne crois pas qu'il puisse y avoir d'erreur sur la date puisqu'elle vient de Braque lui-même et correspond à la numérotation faite par son photographe...
...painting was 'one of two' paintings that Braque painted on the subject of "the dessert", which were photographed in his studio during the war and that he dated 1941 for the catalogue. I do not think there is a problem regarding the date, as it came directly from Braque and corresponds to the numbering by the photographer.