Nature morte et verre (Still Life with Glass)

Georges Braque

1930

On View in Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 3

In the 1900s and 1910s Georges Braque, along with Pablo Picasso, was instrumental in the development of Cubism, the renunciation of perspectival illusionism in painting. Throughout much of his career Braque painted still lifes, associating the genre with objects at close range. This late Cubist painting from the 1930s shows a wooden table covered with a patterned tablecloth and a group of objects including a pipe, a glass, a fruit bowl with a cluster of grapes, and the letters J O R. Several of these items are depicted from multiple perspectives at once. The glass, for example, though rendered volumetrically, is shown both from above and straight on, while the flat tabletop parallels the flatness of the painting surface. Through the combination of different spatial representations, Braque created a complicated system that hovers between the painterly illusion of physical objects in space and the flatness of the canvas itself. [Permanent collection label, 2019]

Artist Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)
Title Nature morte et verre (Still Life with Glass)
Date 1930
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 20 3/16 x 25 5/8 in.
Credit line University purchase, Kende Sale Fund, 1946
Copyright © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Object number WU 3807

Technique oil painting
Work type painting

Currently on View Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 3

Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–45
The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), 06/08/2013 - 09/01/2013
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/25/2013 - 04/21/2013

Art and the Mind-Brain
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/27/2012 - 04/16/2012

Picasso to Pollock: H.W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, Texas), 08/17/2004 - 10/24/2004

Collecting Patterns
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/05/2003 - 12/07/2003

H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/30/2002 - 12/08/2002
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries (New York, New York), 03/12/2002 - 04/06/2002

Cubism and Abstraction
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/12/1998 - 04/05/1998

A Gallery of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/09/1994 - 10/16/1994

Braque: Still Lifes and Interiors
Walker Art Gallery, 09/07/1990 - 10/21/1990
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, 10/27/1990 - 12/09/1990

Georges Braque
Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art (Shizuoka, Japan), 09/23/1988 - 10/27/1988
Sogo Museum of Art (Yokohama, Japan), 11/16/1988 - 12/11/1988
Isetan Museum of Art, Shinjuku (Tokyo, Japan), 07/14/1988 - 08/09/1988

Cubists, Surrealists, and Expressionists

Capsule of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/09/1983 - 03/06/1983

The Centennial Exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1981 - 10/11/1981

Cubist, Expressionist, and Surrealist Paintings and Sculptures

Washington University Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture from Daumier to Pollock
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 04/06/1966 - 05/08/1966

Braque (1882–1963): An American Tribute, The Thirties
Paul Rosenberg and Company (New York, New York), 04/07/1964 - 05/02/1964

Opening Exhibition of Mark C. Steinberg Memorial Hall
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 04/29/1960

Art at Washington University
Saint Louis Art Museum, 05/07/1953 - 05/31/1953

An Exhibition of Contemporary Art
Fine Arts Center Gallery, University of Arkansas, 04/15/1951 - 05/15/1951

Seeing the Unseeable
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, 01/03/1947 - 02/10/1947

Since Cézanne: A Cross Section of 17 Leading Painters of the Ecole de Paris
Valentine Gallery (New York, New York), 12/28/1931 - 01/16/1932

H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art 2002

Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–1945 2013

Until 1930
Artist

1930–October 1931
[Paul Rosenberg et Cie. (1878–1987), Paris, France, and later New York, NY] [1]

October 1931–April 26, 1933
[Valentine Gallery, New York (1926–1947), New York, NY, purchase from the above] [2]

April 26, 1933–April 1946
[Paul Rosenberg et Cie. (1878–1987), Paris, France, and later New York, NY, purchase from the above] [3]

April 1946–
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, University purchase, Kende Sale Fund [4]

Notes:

[1]

January 19, 1965, letter from Paul Rosenberg & Co. to William N. Eisendrath Jr., then Director of the Washington University Art Gallery, WU 3807 object file, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis (hereafter referred to as WU 3807 object file). See also “Georges Braque, Compotier de raisins, verre, et pipe (1930),” PROS 7.7, Centre Pompidou/MNAM-CCI/Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Fonds Paul Rosenberg, https://bibliothequekandinsky.centrepompidou.fr/opac?id=1111bc5e-a406-4c5c-b549-7df03b0d7e36. This record contains a digital image of a Rosenberg stock photograph (glass plate reproduction) and indicates that WU 3807 was Rosenberg stock number 2817.

[2]

Dudensing Gallery stock book, vol. 3, p. 9, Valentine Dudensing Ledger Books, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, NY. In this stock book, WU 3807 is listed as #432.

[3]

January 19, 1965, letter from Paul Rosenberg & Co. to William N. Eisendrath Jr., WU 3807 object file.

[4]

WU 3807 object file.

Inscription [LR:] G. Braque 30

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