Galerie Louise Leiris (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler), Paris
Private Collection (acquired circa 1988)
Private Collection (acquired circa 1999)

Canvas is unlined. Surface is slightly dirty. Under UV light there are three hairline strokes of inpainting, each under one inch long, in lower right quadrant. Work is in very good condition.
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Towards the end of his career, Braque became preoccupied with the subject of the bird.  While this motif appears in a number of the artist's earlier still-lifes, by the late 1950s the image of the bird became an independent subject in its own right.  "The most likely explanation for Braque's perennial fascination with this aerial creature is the obvious link between the bird and the question of space, one of the painter's major preoccupations throughout his career. George Braque confirms this himself in an interview with Jean Leymarie published in No. 5 of the magazine Quadrum in 1958: 'It was in 1929 that the motif first came to me, for an illustration to Hesiod.  I had already painted birds in 1910, but they were incorporated into still lifes, whereas in my recent works I have been greatly exercised by space and movement'" (quoted in George Braque, Order & Emotion (exhibition catalogue), Andros, 2003, n.p.)

In 1955 Braque visited the Camargue nature reserve, where he saw a variety of birds including herons, egrets and flamingoes.  Recalling the experience, the artist remarked: 'I saw great birds passing over the lagoons, and from that vision I took aerial forms.  Birds have inspired me, and I try to extract from them the maximum profit for my drawing and painting.  Yet I must bury their natural function as birds deep in my memory ... so that I can draw closer to my essential preoccupation: the construction of pictorial fact'" (quoted in John Golding, Braque: the Late Works, 1997, New Haven, p. 31).

Unlike Braque's early still lifes, the paintings from the last decade of his life celebrate the bird in flight.  In the present work, Braque focuses on the animal as it moves through space, soaring across the sky, its shadow visible from behind.  Braque has applied the paint in broad, spontaneous strokes, heightening the idea of dynamic movement.  As Braque told the artist Alexander Lieberman as they considered his work The Bird and Its Nest (fig. 1), "'It is more than painting.'  It has a hypnotic power,' said Lieberman.  'That's it,' Braque responded immediately. 'It's as if one heard the fluttering of wings'" (quoted in Alex Danchev, Georges Braque: A Life, New York, 2005, p. 249).

Fig. 1 The artist with his painting The Bird and Its Nest, 1955