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https://piction.clevelandart.org/cma/ump.di?e=640D12724AF283EED5D19159AD195DB2D012C703AB2716405E53F7C68EE16F3F&s=24247294&se=230795363&v=4&f=1975.82_o2.jpg

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Aug 9, 2007

The Crystal Vase

1929

Georges Braque

(French, 1882–1963)

France, 20th century

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 41.2 x 120.5 cm (16 1/4 x 47 7/16 in.)

Gift of Alexandre P. Rosenberg 1975.82

Location

not on view

Did you know?

After meeting in 1907, Braque worked closely with Pablo Picasso to create Cubism, a radically new style concerned with formal abstraction and the reorganization of pictorial space.

Description

This still life is one of four paintings commissioned from Georges Braque by collector Paul Rosenberg for his home at 21 rue de la Boetie in Paris. Each painting hung on a separate wall of the dining room, and mosaics based on the paintings were inlaid in the floor, creating a remarkably harmonious grouping known as the "Rosenberg Quartet." When Rosenberg sold his apartment in 1949, the paintings were dispersed (another work from the series is at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC) and the mosaics were converted to tabletops. Crystal Vase is unique among the group for its color scheme—comprising thin washes of muted beiges, grays, and oranges—and for its elegant placement of objects within the challenging elongated rectangular space. The painting combines Braque’s Cubist style of the 1920s with homages to his French forebears Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and Paul Cézanne.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed lower left: G Braque / 29

Provenance

1929-probably 1959

Paul Rosenberg [1881-1959], Paris and New York, by descent to his son, Alexandre Rosenberg ¹

Probably 1959-1975

Alexandre Rosenberg [1921-1987], New York, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art

1975-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Provenance Footnotes

¹In 1928-1929, Braque executed four compositions in preparation for four marble mosaic panels to be installed in the dining room floor of art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s Paris apartment at 21 rue La Boëtie. Braque gave the preparatory compositions and the CMA painting to Rosenberg. When Rosenberg sold the apartment in 1949, the marble panels were removed from the floor and made into table tops resting on wrought iron bases, also designed by Braque. The table made after The Crystal Vase was in the Paris collection of Rosenberg’s daughter, Micheline, at the time of Alexandre’s donation of the painting to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Citations

Braque, Georges. Georges Braque. Lyon: Fage Editions, 2018. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 42-43

Alexandre Rosenberg, letter to Sherman Lee, Nov. 14, 1975, in CMA curatorial file.

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 243 archive.org

Exhibition history

Le Havre, France. Musée des Beaux-Arts André-Malraux "Georges Braque" (3/19 - 6/21/99) repr. p. 64.

Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 20 - May 29, 2005. "Masterworks from The Phillips Collection". Not in exh. cat.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis (1/25/2013 - 4/21/2013) and The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (6/8/2013 - 9/1/2103): "Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life,", p. 123, Plate 5.

Year in Review: 1975. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 3-March 7, 1976).

Georges Braque. Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, 76600 Le Havre, France (organizer) (March 19-June 21, 1999).

Masterworks from The Phillips Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 20-May 29, 2005).

Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (organizer) (January 25-April 21, 2013); The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (June 8-September 1, 2013).

Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=The Crystal Vase|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1975.82|author=Georges Braque|year=1929|access-date=30 May 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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The Crystal Vase

The Crystal Vase

Georges Braque

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Provenance Footnotes

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