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Lot Essay
Quentin Laurens has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
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.
Apart from periodic trips to Varengeville, Braque remained in Paris during the war. There is no evidence that he worked for the resistance, but his presence in the city, as well as that of Pablo Picasso, gave some comfort to those who feared that the capitulation to Germany might also signal the demise of French art and culture. "At the time of the outbreak of World War II Braque was at the zenith of his maturity and had attained international recognition as one of the greatest living French artists. The still-lifes executed in the second half of the 1930s are among the fullest and most sumptuous in the entire French canon" (J. Golding, Braque: The Late Works, exh. cat., The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997, p. 1). Braque ceased painting during the remaining months of 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 in the countryside Braque could obtain modest luxuries like bread, fish, fruit and flowers. But in contrast to the lavish still lifes of the 1930s the arrangements in the wartime paintings are 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).
Braque painted Les arums not long after taking up his brush again in 1941. A slender beam of light enters a darkened room, perhaps through an unseen door left ajar, an effect emphasized by the narrow vertical format of the canvas, and illuminates the table and the vase of flowers. Painted in pale white, light gray and pink tones against a dark gray background, and emerging from a black vase, the calla lilies stand solemnly and bravely erect, like twin flames in a beacon, quietly heralding the return of spring and pointing hopefully to better times to come.
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.
Apart from periodic trips to Varengeville, Braque remained in Paris during the war. There is no evidence that he worked for the resistance, but his presence in the city, as well as that of Pablo Picasso, gave some comfort to those who feared that the capitulation to Germany might also signal the demise of French art and culture. "At the time of the outbreak of World War II Braque was at the zenith of his maturity and had attained international recognition as one of the greatest living French artists. The still-lifes executed in the second half of the 1930s are among the fullest and most sumptuous in the entire French canon" (J. Golding, Braque: The Late Works, exh. cat., The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997, p. 1). Braque ceased painting during the remaining months of 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 in the countryside Braque could obtain modest luxuries like bread, fish, fruit and flowers. But in contrast to the lavish still lifes of the 1930s the arrangements in the wartime paintings are 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).
Braque painted Les arums not long after taking up his brush again in 1941. A slender beam of light enters a darkened room, perhaps through an unseen door left ajar, an effect emphasized by the narrow vertical format of the canvas, and illuminates the table and the vase of flowers. Painted in pale white, light gray and pink tones against a dark gray background, and emerging from a black vase, the calla lilies stand solemnly and bravely erect, like twin flames in a beacon, quietly heralding the return of spring and pointing hopefully to better times to come.