Description:Standing as a rare example of Braque's organic interpretation of form, this image captures the quality of an original drawing and watercolor. Creating a dramatic quality within the work, the artist employs a vast variation of color and saturation in order to highlight the bird's flight and ultimate return to the nest.
Published by Maeght, circa 1956, this work is part of a series of lithographs and etchings that were based upon Braque's original watercolors, gouaches and paintings. Braque was very involved in the printing process, overseeing either the engraver or lithographer, correcting the proofs when necessary. The work is signed in pencil along the lower margin of the image and numbered 135/300.
Increasing in intensity as the viewer approaches the central portion of the image, Braque in effect exposes the creative lawyers of the image. First revealing the pencil drawing of the foliage along the outer portions of the image, he slowly adds varying layers of coloration creating the appearance of translucent pigmentation characteristic of watercolor. The climax of the image is revealed in the depiction of the nest which the artist highlights with the application of a white chalk like pigment. This work is truly remarkable in its varied representation of a multitude of artistic materials.
Of Braque's later bird series, Edwin Mullins has stated the following, "in the simplest possible manner the metaphysical and the physical merge in these last paintings of birds and sky. Horizon, sky, cosmic space even, are now tactile as formerly Braque had made a jug or a lemon tactile; yet the bird that wings across these clotted skies remains an unreal and insubstantial thing, an image from a dream. In Bird Returning to its Nest [the work from which Bird and His Nest was inspired], which Braque chose to represent him at the World Fair of 1958, the light and dark areas are reversed, the sky now being a deep brown impasto which even more strongly emphasizes its material nature, while the bird gliding across it is pale buff" (Mullins, 199-200) .
In sharp contrast to the cubist works created in collaboration with Picasso, this work displays the mature aesthetic style that Georges Braque developed starting in the 1920's and 30's.
Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
It is fully documented and referenced in (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that I will accompany the final sale of the work) :
1) Vallier, Dora; Braque: The Complete Graphics Catalogue Raisonné, 1982, listed as Maeght, no. 1028 on page 294.
About the Framing:
Conservation framed with archival museum quality materials, this work is set in a warm gold with dark wood frame. The robust sculptural quality of the frame accentuates the natural organic forms in this work. Warm tones of gold and deep brown in the moulding compliment the earthy hues of this piece. Completed with white linen wrapped mattes and a matching gold inner fillet, this work is set behind archival Plexiglas.
