Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil near Paris, and raised in Le Havre. Initially apprenticed to a house painter, he studied art at the Académie Humbert in Paris from 1902 to 1904. His art underwent several stylistic changes during his life. About 1906 he, along with his friend Othon Friesz, briefly adopted Fauvism. After he attended the memorial exhibition for Paul Cézanne in 1907, his work reflected more geometric analysis. That year Braque met Pablo Picasso, with whom he collaborated closely on the development of Cubism (1907–14). Their intense relationship, however, did not continue after World War I. After being discharged from the army with a severe head injury in 1915, Braque resumed painting again in 1917.
Braque withdrew and, living in semiseclusion, created still lifes, interiors, and, occasionally, landscapes that combine the formal innovations of Cubism with greater emphasis on the decorative, sensuous, and lyrical aspects of painting. By the 1930s he was internationally recognized as a still-life painter.
In this oil Braque presents a view of his studio, which he had built in 1931 at Varengeville, a small village on the Norman coast near Dieppe. Light from the central window streams into the room, illuminating the flower still life and the palette with brushes at the left and the wicker stool and easel holding a painting at the right. The colorful interior is a sea of merry patterns: floral wallpaper, wood grain, and the basket weave of the chair seat. The patterning continues to the exterior in the cloud-dappled sky.
This oil and the series of large paintings of the same interior that Braque executed between 1946 and 1956 might be regarded as the artist's meditations on his works, both past and present, as well as his surroundings, both real and imagined.
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