GEORGES BRAQUE, I.O. Conductrice ll (le char), 1934

This work appears very closely linked to another Braque painting, Le char (Conductrice III), also from 1934. The two are formalised with the same style and use the same artistic features to depict a horse and chariot driven by a woman, seen from the side. The two are also framed in a similar way, and their forms are simplified, even stylised, whilst the colours used break from those in reality.

The re-use of the horse and chariot theme in this painting brings about some subtle but nonetheless noticeable differences from the previous painting. The colours used are not identical across the two works: here, the chariot and the horses are painted using grey and white, with some notes of light blue. The background, unlike in the other painting, is now of a beige colour bordering on yellow ochre. The painted-on frame is also not structured here as it is in Braque’s other work: rather than being oval-shaped, the frame is drawn in an asymmetrical, irregular way. Although in both of these paintings, brown and black lines sketch the body and hair of the charioteer, the lady here is more slender and wears differentcoloured clothes.

The semi-circular area of the ground underneath the chariot is now gone, which gives the impression that, in Conductrice II (Le char II), the thing is running directly along the bottom of the canvas. This generates a blurred line between the painting’s own diegesis – the story it tells us – and the ostensible cut-off point inserted by the painted-on frame. A similar ambiguity can be seen elsewhere, in works from much before the twentieth century. These include Francesco del Cossa’s Annonciation (1470–1472), studied by Daniel Arasse, in which a snail painted onto the lower edge of the painting seems so believably to be squirming down into the frame that the very notion of the frame is subverted.

The composition here lacks perspective and depth, since the movement is indicated as going laterally (right to left) across the front, rather than taking place in the background of the work. Two aspects included by the artist imply that the chariot’s journey is a frantic one: the horses’ hooves are not touching the ground, and the stylised semicircle representing the charioteer’s tunic seems to be being buffeted by the wind.

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