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Lot Essay
‘You see, I have made a great discovery: I no longer believe in anything. Objects don’t exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them, and between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence – what I can only describe as a state of peace – which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation.’ (G. Braque quoted in, Cooper, Braque: The Great Years, Chicago, 1972, p. 101)
Painted in 1957, in the final phase of his long and fruitful career, Nature morte à la théière (fond vert) is an example of Georges Braque’s great mastery of and flair for the still-life genre. With rich, opulent colours, and areas of thick impasto, Braque has conveyed a sumptuous image of a still-life within an interior. The undulating curves of the table, on which objects, including a plate of fruit, are arranged, contrasts with the vertical structure of the background. Detail is simplified, reduced to planes of colour, separated in places by passages of white.
The long, rectangular shape of Nature morte à la théière (fond vert) was a format Braque had often exploited throughout his career. In 1957, the time that Nature morte à la théière (fond vert) was painted, Braque was also working on a number of landscapes and seascapes at his home in Varengeville, Normandy, conceived in the same horizontal format as the present work. The idea of manipulating the shape of the canvas to impart a stronger structural force to the composition was not new in Braque’s artistic practice: in the early decades of the 1900s, the artist had, for instance, used an oval format to give power to his revolutionary cubist still-lifes. In Nature morte à la théière (fond vert), the rectangular-shaped canvas allows Braque to depict the width of the table on which the objects are placed, invoking a literal sense of the pictorial space.
Painted in 1957, in the final phase of his long and fruitful career, Nature morte à la théière (fond vert) is an example of Georges Braque’s great mastery of and flair for the still-life genre. With rich, opulent colours, and areas of thick impasto, Braque has conveyed a sumptuous image of a still-life within an interior. The undulating curves of the table, on which objects, including a plate of fruit, are arranged, contrasts with the vertical structure of the background. Detail is simplified, reduced to planes of colour, separated in places by passages of white.
The long, rectangular shape of Nature morte à la théière (fond vert) was a format Braque had often exploited throughout his career. In 1957, the time that Nature morte à la théière (fond vert) was painted, Braque was also working on a number of landscapes and seascapes at his home in Varengeville, Normandy, conceived in the same horizontal format as the present work. The idea of manipulating the shape of the canvas to impart a stronger structural force to the composition was not new in Braque’s artistic practice: in the early decades of the 1900s, the artist had, for instance, used an oval format to give power to his revolutionary cubist still-lifes. In Nature morte à la théière (fond vert), the rectangular-shaped canvas allows Braque to depict the width of the table on which the objects are placed, invoking a literal sense of the pictorial space.