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Violin and Candlestick

Oil on canvas by Georges Braque (1910). A classic of Analytic Cubism: the violin and candlestick are deconstructed into overlapping faceted planes in a monochromatic brown-grey palette — form analyzed from multiple viewpoints simultaneously. SFMOMA, San Francisco.

Scholarly Significance

Classic Analytic Cubist still life by Braque; key node for Cubism cluster and Braque artist node.

Notes

  • ·Painted during the height of the Braque-Picasso Analytic Cubism collaboration (1908–1914).
  • ·The brown-grey palette is characteristic of Analytic Cubism's rejection of Fauvist color.
  • ·The violin, along with the guitar, was Braque's preferred instrument subject — he played guitar himself.
  • ·At this stage the works of Braque and Picasso were so similar the artists sometimes left canvases unsigned.
  • ·SFMOMA acquired this work in the 1930s, making it a key node in American museum holdings of European Cubism.