GEORGES BRAQUE, Les Rougets, 1937

The theme of fish within still life paintings recurs regularly in Georges Braque’s oeuvre, be it with La carafe et les poissons (1941), Les poissons noirs (1942) or even Les deux rougets (1940–1941).

Here, in Les Rougets, we are shown two fish, placed on a dish that sits on a thick-set table. The table also houses two lemons and two pots. One of these pots contains what could either be three brushes or three pencils. Against the back wall, two or three framed paintings can be seen, but not in their entirety; they are positioned largely out of shot. Although the work is clearly structured and quite dark in tone, it does contain some lighter notes: the two fish, the lemons and one of the pots, which is brightly decorated, bring splashes of colour. Beyond still life, Georges Braque is nodding to the theme of ‘paintings within paintings’ by depicting the canvases hung on the back wall, behind the red mullets in the dish. These background paintings – of which we can detect only a small fragment – seem to contain decorative images, but we are unable to discern precisely what these are.

Even if the key elements in this painting appear figurative, what they are not is mimetic, since the world of the painting is drawn in a simplified, stylised way.

The dish and the red mullets in the foreground seem elevated above the other aspects of the painting; the perspective is left purposefully distorted, using a method typical of Cubist art. The background lacks depth, which is restricted by the wallpaper and the snippets of those paintings that we can see. The work as a whole might, as such, very well bring to mind the corner of an art studio as much as a simple still life. Brush strokes are visible on the canvas without being overstated, whilst the texture cannot be said to be particularly thick.

There are clear contrasts between the colours used in this painting: the dark greys, blacks, browns and burgundy cut against the much lighter tones on display (whites, pinks, yellows, reds and Old Rose). The clarity with which the fish are drawn serves to bring them forward and, as a result, put them most on show for the viewer. This makes sense, given that they are the work’s principal subject. The artist creates a strong interplay between the parti pris des choses (an expression attributed to Braque by Francis Ponge, meaning the ‘bias of things’) and the formal structure within the painting. The ‘figures’ and the background are neatly entangled in this piece, with the core subject being the painting itself, not the specific, mimetic representation of any one thing.

Undoubtedly, this painting gives quite a sober outlook on shapes, colour and texture, but it also embodies a feeling of harmony, stability and balance which could as easily remind us of certain Henri Matisse paintings.

Georges Braque’s Post Cubist Masterpieces, Anthem Edition, 2024.