Braque was born in Argentieul in 1892, from a young age, he attended art classes at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1904, setting up his studio. Braque is regarded, along with Picasso as the pioneer of Cubism. Together they developed this new visual language, which took as its major concern, the depiction of three dimensional form, through using multiple view points in a two dimensional capacity.

Braque, prior to his influential relationship with Picasso, and his experience of Cezanne’s complex formal art works in 1907 found inspiration in the work of Matisse and Derain, members of the Fauvist group. After initially producing work in an early Impressionist style, his encounter with Matisse and Derain’s work at the Salon d’Automne, rendered in the characteristically brightly coloured, painterly style of the Fauves, his work too became infused with this bright palette, applied with freedom and expressive rigour.  

Braque produced many prints during his career, from 1907-12 he was producing engravings in a cubist style. Braque mastered a variety of print making techniques including lithography, etching, aquatint and woodcut. His production of these prints remained essential to his work throughout and after his Cubist period. From the 1930s onwards- a time when his subjects moved away from the studio based still lives, and began to incorporate seascapes, and in the 1940s, birds, the strong colours characteristic of his early works reappeared in all their vivid intensity.