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拍品專文
Painted in 1955, in the final phase of his long and fruitful career, Nature morte à la grand cruche is an example of Georges Braque’s great mastery of and flair for the still-life genre. Deep, earthy colours that sing of his earlier cubist years are punctuated with bright splices of colour in the fruit and spout of the jug; the smooth and sinuous lines of paint glide between areas of thick impasto to create a surface alive with movement, varied in tempo. The undulating curves of the table, on which objects, including a plate of fruit, are arranged, contrasts with the vertical structure of the background which anchors the complex configuration. Detail is simplified, reduced to planes of colour, separated in places by passages of white in his signature style of this period.
This complex, lyrical and confidently mastered still-life composition presents itself as a mature example of the genre of which Georges Braque was an unparalleled master. Braque regarded himself as the heir of Chardin and Cézanne, ennobling the most mundane of objects through a clear and implacably strict inner logic, the underpinnings of which were based on pictorial solutions he and Picasso had proposed during their cubist experiments. For Braque, the language of cubism provided limitless possibilities and dictated the form and balance of his still-lifes.
“Still-life has always been the specialty of Braque's genius. Seldom has painting been used to confer so much enchantment on such ordinary things: loaves of bread, knives, packets of cigarettes, fruit, flowers, and innumerable domestic accessories... Like Chardin before him, Braque takes us into the salon, the kitchen, the bedroom, the dining-room, even into his own studio in pursuit of reality: nothing is too humble to find a place in one of his pictures... So, from the lowliest objects Braque extracts a new poetry as he paints, and our experience of the world becomes fuller and more exciting. If we will look, Braque will teach us to see, and this, after all, is the highest function of the true artist” (D. Cooper, “Georges Braque, The Evolution of a Vision,” G. Braque, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1956, pp. 14-15).
This complex, lyrical and confidently mastered still-life composition presents itself as a mature example of the genre of which Georges Braque was an unparalleled master. Braque regarded himself as the heir of Chardin and Cézanne, ennobling the most mundane of objects through a clear and implacably strict inner logic, the underpinnings of which were based on pictorial solutions he and Picasso had proposed during their cubist experiments. For Braque, the language of cubism provided limitless possibilities and dictated the form and balance of his still-lifes.
“Still-life has always been the specialty of Braque's genius. Seldom has painting been used to confer so much enchantment on such ordinary things: loaves of bread, knives, packets of cigarettes, fruit, flowers, and innumerable domestic accessories... Like Chardin before him, Braque takes us into the salon, the kitchen, the bedroom, the dining-room, even into his own studio in pursuit of reality: nothing is too humble to find a place in one of his pictures... So, from the lowliest objects Braque extracts a new poetry as he paints, and our experience of the world becomes fuller and more exciting. If we will look, Braque will teach us to see, and this, after all, is the highest function of the true artist” (D. Cooper, “Georges Braque, The Evolution of a Vision,” G. Braque, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1956, pp. 14-15).