Fox

1911

At the time that he made this print, Georges Braque, along with Pablo Picasso, was experimenting with a radical new visual language of fragmented forms and nonperspectival space that would come to be known as Cubism. For this etching, commissioned by the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Braque used the drypoint technique to create a field of bold, short lines and crosshatched texture in which the objects of a still life may be discerned. “FOX” denotes the name of a bar that Braque and his fellow artists patronized, and the words “Old Tom Gin” refer to the bottle of liquor resting on a table at the lower right. Also recognizable are a playing card with a heart, and a number—perhaps a coin denomination—suggesting the café culture of early twentieth-century Paris that was so often a motif in Braque’s still lifes.