Biography: The French painter Georges Braque (1882-1963) is widely known as the artist who, with Picasso, upturned the Renaissance precept that a painting should be a window on the world.
Braque's apprenticeship as a painter-decorator, skilled in stencilling and painting mock wood and marble surfaces, influenced their rejection of illusionism in favour of a more conceptual approach to art. Cézanne's abandonment of the convention of a centralised viewpoint in his paintings paved the way for fragmenting their forms to indicate multiple viewpoints. Of Picasso, in his pre- and post-cubist phases, much is known. Of Braque, cited as "the third man of modern art" in Georges Braque: A Life, the other two being Matisse and Picasso, less is known.
Braque himself wrote more than many artists. Several contemporaries kept accounts of the period. In the 1950s Patrick Heron, John Russell, André Verdet and John Richardson (later the biographer of Picasso) produced monographs. Karen Wilkin's Braque was published in 1991. Exhibitions such as Picasso and Braque at MoMA in 1992 and Braque: The Late Works in the Royal Academy in 1997 indicate a consistent level of interest in the painter. But Braque's personality has remained elusive. A full-scale biography is welcome.
Alex Danchev, professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham, brings unusual strengths to his writing on Braque. Early pages are somewhat choppy. In the first chapter, which should perhaps be an introduction, he does not wholly adopt the conventional chronological narrative structure; he oscillates between it and synopsis. A shortage of biographical material may well be the reason behind this. The shortage is not coincidental; Braque was resolutely private.
Danchev quotes, appropriately, from Dora Vallier's 12 one-hour interviews with Braque, published in 1954. The artist "vetted the text before publication, as had been stipulated, but altered nothing". But other contemporary sources used early on, including the insights of Francis Ponge, are harnessed to bring forward the character of the mature painter. This strategy can seem premature here - suggesting rather too firmly to the reader how they should envisage the character of the painter.
In creating a picture of the young Braque, Danchev quotes at length from Stendhal and then asserts "it is not too much to believe that Braque felt something like that". He then quotes Rimbaud's four-stanza poem Vowels, before commenting "that [Braque] could appreciate".
The point presumably is that Braque was a man of his discipline - painting. Very true: he was committed to his materials and processes in an almost Zen way. Perhaps it is appropriate to approach the life of a Cubist painter from many viewpoints. But by the time chapter one ends with a long quotation from Diderot on Chardin, the reader's concentration is likely to have been challenged.
After a broad-ranging, wobbly enough start, real pace is injected. As Danchev moves into a period where there is more material available, the handsome young Braque - a good boxer, a good musician, fond of nice clothes - emerges. Braque's first interview, with Gelett Burgess in 1908, is used to give welcome insight into his work. 1908 was the year Braque's one-man show of 27 paintings at Galerie Kahnweiler introduced what was shortly to be called cubism to the world. Danchev is excellent on the art market and on Braque's dealers; especially on Kahnweiler, who translated Braque's Thoughts and Reflections on Painting (1917) into German. Pierre Reverdy helped Braque formulate these thoughts.
The relationship between Picasso and Braque is skilfully portrayed. We sense the fun they had. Picasso introduced Braque to Marcelle, his slightly older and only wife, in 1908. They moved in together in 1912, and were a close, childless couple, marrying in 1926.
She had modelled for Modigliani. She seems to have been very nice. She particularly enjoyed the company of the painter Nicolas de Staël, and of Fernand Mourlot, the master printer who did the photolithography for Cahier de Georges Braque (1947).
A sweet hostess, she always remembered Heidegger's preference for good white wine, and Herbert Read's for brown bread and raspberry jam. It would have been interesting to have her presence more sustained throughout the book.
Danchev recounts the anecdote about Picasso positioning Braque as his other half, creatively speaking. Picasso visited Braque in hospital just before or after the second World War. He was refused permission to see Braque on the grounds that Madame Braque was with him. The nurse "didn't realise that I am Madame Braque", fumed Picasso.
Danchev, who has published widely on military matters, writes really well about Braque and both world wars. In 1939, Braque wrote on the relationship between art and current affairs. He was so badly wounded on the Western Front in May 1915 that his batman (personal servant) sent his papers to the next of kin. He underwent trepanation, a procedure where holes were drilled into the skull to relieve pressure. Marcelle asked Picasso to accompany him on her first visit to her hospitalised lover. But ultimately the Great War sent the Spaniard and the Frenchman on different emotional paths. In the immediate aftermath Braque was unable to endure what Max Jacob called Picasso's "duchess period". Its worldliness pained the brave and reflective Braque.
By 1930 Braque was prosperous enough to build a fine house with a vast south-facing studio in Montparnasse, and plan another in Varengeville. He drove fast, expensive cars and eventually had a chauffeur.
This biography is strong on marshalling the views, usually laudatory, of eminent men of letters on Braque. But the perspective of the art historian is missing. In a very good chapter on Braque during the Occupation, Danchev quotes from Ernst Jünger: "Braque, who detests having the model or other object in front of him, always paints from memory." To the art historian this kind of observation is critical. Here it is one among many.
And after we read about Braque's state funeral, organised by his friend André Malraux, we come to an account by Patrick Heron of a visit to Braque's studio in 1949. Braque was painting his famous Studio series. "There were five paintings on five easels, ranged around in an arc . . . For ten or fifteen minutes he transferred, with a small brush, three tiny mounds of mixed oil paint from two palettes . . ." wrote Heron. Bliss.
Sometimes in biography there is a sense that you neither quite meet the art or the artist properly, but bump into the paraphernalia of both.
Vera Ryan teaches art history at the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork. Collins Press published Movers and Shapers: Irish Art Since 1960 in 2003. A second volume is due out later this year
Georges Braque: A Life By Alex Danchev Hamish Hamilton, 440 pp. £35