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A painting in gray and shades of light and dark brown with black highlights and outlines.

The painting is divided one-third of the way from the top by a thin gently arched black line. The colors are muted and flat. Above the dividing line, a half-moon of dark gray fills the top left corner, below it roughly shaped rectangles lie diagonally, outlined in black and stacked form an inverted V-shape on the right which is filled in with dark gray. Below the dividing line, patches of gray are centered and across the to the right side, interspersed are rectangles and pyramid shaped areas in shades of dark to light brown.

Gallery Text

Exhibitions of the work of postimpressionist painter Paul Cézanne after his death in 1906 spurred several vanguard artists, Braque among them, to emulate the master and further his legacy. In May 1908 Braque traveled from Paris to paint in L’Estaque, a small French fishing village on the Mediterranean where Cézanne had made some of his most iconic paintings. The repetitive brushstroke, restricted palette, and vertiginous perspective of The Bay of Estaque demonstrate the influence of Cézanne. But the allover flattening of the rooftops in the foreground, hills in the background, and surface of the sea into a grid of roughly pyramidal units anticipates the innovative cubist painterly idiom Braque would develop alongside Picasso in the following year.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2001.117
People
Georges Braque, French (Argenteuil, France 1882 - 1963 Paris, France)
Title
The Bay of Estaque
Other Titles
Original Language Title: La Baie de L'Estaque
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1908
Places
Creation Place: Europe, France
Culture
French
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/165401

Location

Location
Level 1, Room 1300, Modern and Contemporary Art, Early Modernism
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
33 x 41 cm (13 x 16 1/8 in.)
frame: 49.8 x 58.1 x 3.8 cm (19 5/8 x 22 7/8 x 1 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris (inv. no. 118)]. Roger Dutilleul, Paris. Jean Masurel, Mouvaux. [Galerie Beyeler, Basel (through Martha Beck, New York, New York)], sold; to Harvard University Art Museums, 2001.

NOTE: In Dutilleul possession in 1933 according to e-mail from Susanne Kress dated 4/5/05.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Myron Laskin, George David, Ellen Abbott Gilman Trust, Jessie Lie Farber, Frances H. Burr Memorial Fund and the Director's Discretionary Fund; and through the generosity of Philip and Lynn Straus, Marshall Field, Irvin and Rebekah Taube, John and Jill Walsh and Richard E. Oldenburg in honor of James Cuno
Copyright
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Accession Year
2001
Object Number
2001.117
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Georges Braque, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, Switzerland, 1933), p. 15, cat. no. 9.
  • Douze Peintures de Georges Braque 1908-1910, brochure, Galerie de France (Paris, France, 1943), Cat. no. 3.
  • Georges Braque, brochure, Landesamt fur Museen, Freiburg (Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, 1948), Cat. no. 2.
  • Autour de 1900, exh. cat., Galerie Charpentier (Paris, France, 1950), Cat. no. 45.
  • W. Rubin, ed., Cezanne: the late work: essays, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY, 1977), p. 172, ill.
  • Nicole Worms de Romilly and Jean Laude, Braque: Cubism 1907-1914, Maeght (Paris, France, 1982), p. 68, fig. 11
  • William Rubin and The Museum of Modern Art, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, exh. cat., Bulfinch Press (New York, 1989), p. 88, ill.
  • Kimberly Orcutt, "Personal Collecting Meets Institutional Vision: The Origins of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum", Journal of the History of Collections (2006), vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 267-284, p. 282
  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 189, ill.
  • Joseph J. Rishel and Katherine Sachs, Cézanne and Beyond, exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2009), p. 536, pl. 216.

Exhibition History

  • Georges Braque, Landesamt fur Museen, Freiburg, 10/01/1948 - 10/01/1948
  • Autour de 1900, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 01/01/1950 - 01/01/1950
  • Collections privees du Nord-Ecole de Paris, Chateau de la Vigne, Bondues, 09/23/1967 - 11/05/1967
  • Le Bateau-Lavoir, Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, 04/12/1977 - 04/24/1977; Osaka Mitsukoshi, 05/03/1977 - 05/15/1977
  • Cezanne and Beyond, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 02/19/2009 - 05/31/2009
  • Re-View: European and American Art Since 1900, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 05/03/2011 - 06/01/2013
  • 32Q: 1300 Early Modernism, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu