The French painter Georges Braque (1882-1967) was, with Picasso, the founder of cubism, one of the most significant movements in Western art.

Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil, the son of a house-painting contractor who was an amateur artist. In 1890 the family settled in Le Havre, where Braque entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1899. He went to Paris in 1900 and worked as a house painter. From 1902 to 1904 Braque studied at the Académie Humbert. As a result of his friendship with Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, both artists from Le Havre, Braque became allied with the Fauve movement in 1906. With Friesz he traveled to Antwerp in 1906, to La Ciotat in 1907, and several times to L'Estaque.

Braque's Fauve period proved transitory, and his Fauve works were relatively restrained. In the Paris version of La Ciotat (1907), for example, the colors, though vivid, are not dazzling, and the brushstrokes...