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Lot Essay
Braque was drawn towards the dramatic, chalky cliffs of the region's coastline that he had first encountered as a boy. From the late 1920s onwards he spent a part of every year at a house he had built for himself on the coast at Varengeville, and it became his valued retreat away from the pressures of life in Paris. It was while staying here that he began his series of small-scale beach landscapes, of which the present lot is a prime example. Falaise et bateau échoué is a work which brilliantly combines Braque’s incomparable feeling for modernist composition with the French landscape painting tradition. Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet had found inspiration in the quiet harbors and on the luminous beaches of the north-west coast of France, and now “the moist silvery light of the Normandy coasts, its cliffs, broad beaches and clear horizons…began to exert their appeal on Braque” (E. Mullins, Braque, 1968, p. 121). In the present work, Braque arranges the elements of a seaside landscape with characteristic deftness, displaying his remarkable sense of how plane, form and color interact.
Landscape had been crucial in Braque's formulation of cubism in the years preceding 1910. However it was to disappear from his repertoire until these beach pictures of almost twenty years later. The quietly lyrical pattern and simple, planar construction of Falaise et bateau échoué, whilst indebted to the rigours of Braque's cubist still-lifes, also recall his work as a ballet designer for Sergei Diaghilev.
Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937) was a key figure in the promotion of modern art in Germany. He was both an art dealer and collector, with two galleries in Düsseldorf and Berlin, with additional branches in Vienna, Frankfurt-am-Main and Cologne at various times. After the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, Alfred Flechtheim was persecuted because of his Jewish descent, leading to the closure of his business in Germany forced emigration to London, where he endeavored to continue as an art dealer in exile. Flechtheim died there in 1937.
Alfred Flechtheim recognized Georges Braque's talent early and became a supporter of the painter, representing the artist in Germany and organizing exhibitions of his work. They remained in contact after Flechtheim’s flight from Germany and had Braque supported his unsuccessful application for French citizenship.
Landscape had been crucial in Braque's formulation of cubism in the years preceding 1910. However it was to disappear from his repertoire until these beach pictures of almost twenty years later. The quietly lyrical pattern and simple, planar construction of Falaise et bateau échoué, whilst indebted to the rigours of Braque's cubist still-lifes, also recall his work as a ballet designer for Sergei Diaghilev.
Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937) was a key figure in the promotion of modern art in Germany. He was both an art dealer and collector, with two galleries in Düsseldorf and Berlin, with additional branches in Vienna, Frankfurt-am-Main and Cologne at various times. After the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, Alfred Flechtheim was persecuted because of his Jewish descent, leading to the closure of his business in Germany forced emigration to London, where he endeavored to continue as an art dealer in exile. Flechtheim died there in 1937.
Alfred Flechtheim recognized Georges Braque's talent early and became a supporter of the painter, representing the artist in Germany and organizing exhibitions of his work. They remained in contact after Flechtheim’s flight from Germany and had Braque supported his unsuccessful application for French citizenship.