The 1908 Painting Houses at Lestaque Gave This Art Style Its Name

1906

Georges Braque
French, 1882–1963

Born into a family of decorative and house painters, Georges Braque one time remarked that his decision to get a painter was no more premeditated than his choosing to breathe. After apprenticing in his father's shop and studying at an art school in his hometown of Le Havre, he went to Paris. In 1905, at the annual Salon d'Automne, he was confronted by the arresting paintings of Henri Matisse and others who had begun to apply vibrant, unmixed colors and energetic, rhythmic brushwork. The unbridled intensity of these works prompted a disapproving critic to phone call the artists "fauves" (wild beasts). Braque quickly joined the group.

Braque painted Mural at L'Estaque on his beginning trip to this boondocks on the French Mediterranean declension. He and other immature artists were drawn to Provence, in southeastern French republic, because of its clear calorie-free and because of their reverence for the art of Paul Cézanne, who worked in and around the area until his death in 1906. Braque drew upon Cézanne's utilize of faceted brushwork, distorted perspectives, and color to structure his compositions for this view down a steep, tree-lined road. Using a palette of highly saturated reds, oranges, and yellows, Braque evoked a sense of turbulent heat, despite the shade provided by the trees. Cézanne'southward influence continued to exert itself over Braque in other, critical means: in early 1908, he would join Pablo Picasso in the development of a revolutionary new style based on the formal construction that constitutes the core of Cézanne's vision. That manner would come to be known as Cubism.
—Entry, Master Paintings in the Art Constitute of Chicago, 2013, p.102.

Status: On View
Department: Modern Art

Artist: Georges Braque
Title: Mural at L'Estaque
Origin: French republic
Date: 1906
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed, l.50.: "M. Braque"
Dimensions: sixty.3 × 72.7 cm (23 iii/4 × 28 five/8 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Friends of the Art Institute of Chicago in honor of Mary Block; Walter Aitken, Martha Leverone, and Major Acquisitions Centennial endowments
Reference Number: 1981.65
Copyright: © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Georges Isarlov, Georges Braque (Paris: José Corti, 1932), p. 15 (no. 26), as Paysage du Midi, 1907.
Gaston Diehl, Les Fauves (Paris: Éditions de Chêne, 1948), north.p. (pl. 2, sick.).
Jean-Paul Crespelle, Les Fauves (Neuchatel: Ides et Calendes, 1962), pp. 213 (fig. 58, ill.), 355, as Paysage à La Ciotat, 1907.
John Richardson (ed.), Georges Braque, 1882–1963: An American Tribute, exh. true cat. (New York: New York Public Pedagogy Association, 1964), north.p. (cat. eight, sick.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907.
National Gallery of Art, Ane Hundred European Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Cake, exh. true cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1967), n.p. (cat. 46, ill.), as Landscape of La Ciotat, 1907.
Museum of Fine Arts, 1 Hundred European Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1967), n.p. (cat. 46, ill.), as Mural of La Ciotat, 1907.
Gaston Diehl, The Fauves (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975), pp. 136, 137 (ill.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907.
Alvin Randolph Martin Three, "Georges Braque: Stylistic Formation and Transition, 1900–1909" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard Academy, 1979), pp. 98, 99, 100, 112, 318, 349 (fig. 60, sick.), every bit Landscape, Fifty'Estaque, 1906.
Sotheby Parke Bernet, Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture from The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block, auction cat. (New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, May 20, 1981), n.p. (lot 333A, ill.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, c. 1906–1907.
Alan G. Artner, "Art Plant acquires a Braque Landscape," Chicago Tribune (July 9, 1981), as Landscape at La Ciotat.
Nobuyuki Senzoku, Georges Braque, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Ato Raifu, 1988), p. 15 (fig. 1, sick.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, c. 1906–7.
James N. Wood and Katharine C. Lee, Chief Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: The Art Establish of Chicago, 1988), p. 112 (ill.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907.
Art Institute, Treasures of 19th- and 20th-Century Painting: The Fine art Institute of Chicago (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), p. 194 (ill.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907.
Art Plant, Masterworks of Modern Fine art from The Art Found of Chicago, exh. cat. (Nagaoka: Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Fine art, 1994), pp. 90 (cat. 23), 91 (sick.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907.
James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Paintings and Sculpture (Chicago: Art Institute, 1996), p. 17 (ill.), as Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907.
Véronique Serrano, Georges Braque et le paysage: De l'Estaque à Varengeville, 1906–1963, exh. cat. (Marseille and Paris: Musée Cantini and Hazan, 2006), p. 161 (fig. 107), as Paysage à Ciotat [Paysage de l'Estaque], 1907 [1906].

New York, Saidenberg Gallery, Georges Braque, 1882–1963: An American Tribute, cat. 8, every bit Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907, Apr. 7–May two, 1964.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Fine art, 100 European Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block, May 4–June 11, 1967, cat. 46, equally Landscape of La Ciotat, 1907; Los Angeles County Museum, Sept. 21–Nov. ii, 1967; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Feb. 2–Apr. 14, 1968.
Nagaoka, Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Masterworks of Modernistic Fine art from The Art Institute of Chicago, Apr. 20–May 29, 1994, cat. 23, every bit Landscape at La Ciotat, 1907; Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, June ten–July 24, 1994; Yokohama Museum of Fine art, Aug. 6–Sept. 25, 1994.
Paris, Thousand Palais, Galeries nationales, Georges Braque, 1882–1963, Sept. 16, 2013–Jan. 6 2014, cat. 9; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Feb. 16–May eleven, 2014.

The artist; Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris, after 1907 to earlier 1914 [Kahnweiler photograph no. 1178; Isarlov 1932]. Max Pellequer, Paris, by 1957 [electronic mail from Ulf Kuester, Mar. 3, 2021; copy in curatorial object file]; Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1957 [Block collection carte du jour; copy in curatorial file]; sold to Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Block, Chicago, Aug. 1958 [Block collection records cited above; interview with Leigh Cake, 1985]; sold, Sotheby's Parke Bernet, New York, May 20, 1981, lot. 333A, to Allan Frumkin Gallery, 1981, on behalf of the Art Institute.

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