Fruit Dish, Ace of Clubs

1913
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
This painting riffs on the novel process of Cubist collage while exploiting traditional artisanal methods. Rather than imitate wood-grain directly, Braque used a decorator’s comb to imitate the faux bois wallpaper he had pasted into his first papiers collés, here pretending to patch scraps of it together. The simulated strips of gray wallpaper with an incised trellis pattern recall the rose-and-trellis wallpaper Picasso employed in his first papiers collés. The black faux cutouts forming the pitched-up tabletop mimic a commercial paper used in other collages. Further allusions to artisanal practice include evidence of the use of a ruler and compass to draft the composition, and the bunch of grapes rendered in the stereotyped manner of a motif on a decorative frieze.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Fruit Dish, Ace of Clubs
  • Artist: Georges Braque (French, Argenteuil 1882–1963 Paris)
  • Date: 1913
  • Medium: Oil, gouache, and charcoal on canvas
  • Dimensions: 31 7/8 × 23 5/8 in. (81 × 60 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Gift of Paul Rosenberg, 1947
  • Rights and Reproduction: © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Photo: Jacques Faujour. © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art