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Lot Essay
In June 1912 Picasso and his new mistress Eve Gouel rented a summer house, the Villa des Clochettes, in the small Provençal town of Sorgues-sur-l'Ouvèze, near Avignon. Braque and his wife Marcelle joined them the following month, and found their own small house nearby, the Villa Bel-Air, which Braque described to his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler as "a Japanese farm with good, old fashioned whitewashed walls like in France" (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917 The Painter of Modern Life, New York, 1996, p. 244). Braque was very likely referring to the fact that when van Gogh lived in Provence he thought it reminded him of the landscapes he saw in Japanese prints.
Picasso liked to decorate his living quarters with paintings done directly on the walls, and painted one of the walls in Les Clochettes with a cubist still-life showing a piece of sheet music of the popular song "Ma Jolie." When he moved out of the house in October he wished to keep the painting, which was a tribute to Eva, and asked Braque, who had professional training as a house painter and decorator, to remove the painting and ship it on to Paris.
Picasso's example probably inspired Braque to decorate his own house in Sorgues, and he executed a series of paintings directly on the walls of his sitting room and in the attic in which he used a fresco technique. The present painting depicts a double-bass, which is virtually life-size. Another surviving example shows a guitar and a still-life on a table with a piece of sheet music (see Rétrospective Georges Braque, exh. cat., Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998, p. 76, no. 19).
Braque made the Villa Bel-Air his summer home until the 1920s, and probably worked on the decorations over a period of time, between 1912 and 1917. Braque made the first papier-collé in Sorgues in early September 1912, during a two-week period when Picasso away in Paris. In the Sorgues decorations Braque uses the whitewash of the walls in a manner similar to the white paper background in his papier-collés. At first glance the present painting may appear unfinished, with the extensive preliminary drawing only partly colored in, and but in this respect it also reflects Braque's method of combining drawing and trimmed sheets of paper in the papier-collés.
The Sorgues decorations were unfortunately never photographed in situ. After the artist's death, his widow Marcelle, in the company of M. and Mme Claude Laurens, visited various places where Braque had lived and worked during the course of his career. They noted the existence of the frescos in the Sorgues house, which were later removed from the walls, transferred to canvas and restored.
Picasso liked to decorate his living quarters with paintings done directly on the walls, and painted one of the walls in Les Clochettes with a cubist still-life showing a piece of sheet music of the popular song "Ma Jolie." When he moved out of the house in October he wished to keep the painting, which was a tribute to Eva, and asked Braque, who had professional training as a house painter and decorator, to remove the painting and ship it on to Paris.
Picasso's example probably inspired Braque to decorate his own house in Sorgues, and he executed a series of paintings directly on the walls of his sitting room and in the attic in which he used a fresco technique. The present painting depicts a double-bass, which is virtually life-size. Another surviving example shows a guitar and a still-life on a table with a piece of sheet music (see Rétrospective Georges Braque, exh. cat., Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998, p. 76, no. 19).
Braque made the Villa Bel-Air his summer home until the 1920s, and probably worked on the decorations over a period of time, between 1912 and 1917. Braque made the first papier-collé in Sorgues in early September 1912, during a two-week period when Picasso away in Paris. In the Sorgues decorations Braque uses the whitewash of the walls in a manner similar to the white paper background in his papier-collés. At first glance the present painting may appear unfinished, with the extensive preliminary drawing only partly colored in, and but in this respect it also reflects Braque's method of combining drawing and trimmed sheets of paper in the papier-collés.
The Sorgues decorations were unfortunately never photographed in situ. After the artist's death, his widow Marcelle, in the company of M. and Mme Claude Laurens, visited various places where Braque had lived and worked during the course of his career. They noted the existence of the frescos in the Sorgues house, which were later removed from the walls, transferred to canvas and restored.