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Bodegon (Spanish tavern). Kitchen picture with still—lifer as a major feature, a genre popular in Spain in the 17th c. A famous example is Velazquez's Old Woman Cooking Eggs.
Body Art. *Action and body art
Body colour. An opaque watercolour, achieved by mixing with white and used to emphasize highlights, either in drawings on coloured paper or in watercolour paintings.
Boetti Alighiero (1940-94). Arte Povera.
Bohemian Masters (fl. mid-i4th c). Painter working in Prague at the court of the Emperor Charles IV. By him are The Glatz- Madonna and Death of the Virgin, 2 of the finest examples of International Gothic style.
Boilly Louis-Leopold (1761—1845). Popular and prolific French portrait, history and genre painter. His work includes Triumph of Marat (c. 1794) and The Arrival of the Stage-Coach (1803).
Boldini Giovanni (b Ferrara, 31 Dec 1842; d Paris, 11 Jan 1931). Italian painter and printmaker. He received his earliest training from his father, the painter Antonio Boldini (1799–1872). From 1858 he may have attended courses given by Girolamo Domenichini (1813–91) and Giovanni Pagliarini (?1809–78) at the Civico Ateneo di Palazzo dei Diamanti, where he assiduously copied Old Masters. At 18 he was already known in Ferrara as an accomplished portrait painter. In 1862 he went to Florence, where he sporadically attended the Scuola del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti. He frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo, a meeting-place of progressive artists, where he came into contact with the MACCHIAIOLI group of artists.
Bol Ferdinand (1616-80). Dutch painter, prior to 1640 a pupil of Rembrandt, to whom many of B.'s paintings were attributed, so well did he imitate his master. In the 1660s his work deteriorated as he pandered to popular taste and painted in a more elegant and decorative manner.
Bologna Giovanni da (Giambologna, Jean de Boulogne) (1529-1608). One of the greatest and most influential Mannerist sculptors, born at Douai and settled in Florence. His most important works were undertaken for the Medici family, including Flying Mercury, Rape of the Sahines and fountains in the Boboli gardens; among his other works are the early fountain of Neptune at Bologna and Samson Slaying a Philistine.
Bologna, school of. School of Italian painting which in the 16th and 17th cs was the centre of classicism as taught by the *Carracci Academy. Distinguished Bolognese painters include Albani, Domenu hino, Guercmo, Lanfranco, Rem and Sassoferrato; several of them were influential in the development of the Baroque style in Rome.
Bologna, Vitale da (b before 1309; d between 1359 and 1361).Italian painter, Bolognese school. The earliest documentary references to Vitale concern S Francesco, Bologna, where he was paid for decorating a chapel in 1330 and where he witnessed deeds in 1334. He was probably born before 1309, since he would have been at least 25 to act as a witness. The earliest works attributed to him are the frescoes of standing saints and Abraham and the Blessed Souls (Bologna, S Martino), which show a strong Riminese influence in the cool, wine-red and olive tones and lean, high-cheeked faces. Vitale’s work continued to reflect Riminese iconography and features, particularly the vivid characterizations associated with Pietro da Rimini, but his style became less dependent upon these sources. He was paid for paintings in a chapel and the guests’ refectory of S Francesco in 1340. The Last Supper from the refectory (detached; Bologna, Pin. N.) retains the cool pinks and rows of standing saints of the S Martino frescoes, but the modelling of the figures is richer and more expressive. The long table and symmetrical architecture are inspired by Giotto’s frescoes in the Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence, and the radical transformation in Vitale’s style, which set him apart from his Bolognese contemporaries, was partly due to Giotto’s influence. Above all, however, his style was influenced by the Master of the Triumph of Death at Pisa. The lively gestures, the loose modelling and lime-green and vermilion palette of Bolognese illuminators, particularly the Illustratore, also began to influence Vitale. Bolognese illumination provided a repertory of genre observation that undoubtedly affected his wide range of iconographic innovations. These varied influences can be seen in the uneven but lively quality of the Crucifixion (c. 1335–40; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.). Vitale’s work is also often compared to that of Sienese painters. There is no substantial evidence of direct influence but his use of dramatic facial types reminiscent of Pietro Lorenzetti and a decorative richness akin to Simone Martini’s painting suggest that he knew their work.
Boltraffio (Beltraffio) Giovanni Antonio (1466/7—1516). Italian painter, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. His work includes Virgin and Child and Narcissus.
Bolus ground. A preparation of an artist's canvas (*oil painting). Bole is a reddish or dark brown earth; applied to the canvas as a ground or working surface, it eventually shows through the painting, producing characteristic effects.
Bomberg David (1890—1957). Polish-born British painter and teacher (1945—53), after years of obscurity, at the Borough Polytechnic, London. B.'s large geometrical compositions, e.g. The Mud Bath (1914), were prominent in the avant-garde of the early 20th c. Later works were representational, e.g. paintings in Palestine (1923—7); from c. 1929 he began to use Expressionist techniques.
Bonampak. Site, in Chiapas, S. Mexico, of wall paintings of Maya classic period of *Pre-Colunibian art dated to c. An 800. The paintings in varied colours, among them a remarkable blue, depict religious processions, military raiding parties and the immolation of prisoners in ritual sacrifice.
Bonaventura Berlinghieri (Italian painter, Lucchese school fl 1228–74). Son of Berlinghiero Berlinghieri. His presence at Lucca from 1232 to 1274 is confirmed by a long series of documents, of which one (1244) records that he undertook the entire decoration (untraced) of the deceased Archdeacon’s room. It was to include bird and other ornamental motifs, according to the wishes of Lombardo, master of works at Lucca Cathedral.Bonington Richard Parkes (1802-28). British painter and lithographer of great talent, living and working, however, mainly in Calais. B. was a friend of *Delacroix and *Lawrence. I le was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1824 at the same time as Constable. In his work the English tradition of topographical landscape combined with the spirit of French Romanticism. His oil paintings and watercolours of marine subjects painted with a light palette and free handling are regarded as his best work. Though B. died young, he had a considerable influence over contemporary and later landscape painting, mainly in France. He was regarded as one of the first to break with the tradition of *David.
Bonnard Pierre (1867—1947). French painter, lithographer and designer who studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (1888) and the Academic |ulian (1889). While a student he met *Serusier, *Vallotton, *Vmllard and the other *Nabis who first exhibited together at the Cafe Volpini m 1889. His early graphic work (Ret'iie Blanche cover, 1 89s) combines acute and often humorous observation of a fleeting pose with an instinctive sense of design. I le ill. a number of books for *Vollard including Parallelemeiil (1900) and the outstanding edition of Daphnis et Chloe' (1902). His decorative use of silhouette reflects the widespread influence of Art Noureau and of Japanese prints. He subscribed to the Nabis doctrine of abandoning 3-dimensional modelling in favour of flat colour areas, but was never committed to the Symbolist aspect of the movement.
After 1900 he concentrated more on painting and although he still worked more from his observation than his imagination, his early wit and charm gave way to a Matisse-like monumentahty of design. Mature works like La Baignoire (1925) play off the considerable surface richness of paint and colour against a simple formal strength and bis acute perception of light. After 191 1 he worked either at Vernon or in S. France.
Bontecou Lee born 1931. American artist born in Providence, Rhode Island. She studied at the Art Students League, New York, 1952-5 under William Zorach and John Hovannes. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Rome 1957-8. First one-woman exhibition (of bronzes) at Gallery G, New York, 1959. Began in 1959 to make relief constructions out of canvas, wire and welded steel, with mysterious openings often protected by grills or menacing metal jaws, and suggestive of mouths, vaginas etc. Turned in 1967 to making free-standing sculptures in vacuum-formed plastic of fish and flowers. Lives in New York.
Bonvicino Alessandro. Il *Moretto
Book of Hours. A prayer book usually illuminated, especially in the 15th c, e.g. Les Ires Riches Heures du Due de Berry and the Rohan Hours.
Boom style. Term apparently coined by Robin Boyd in Australia’s Home (1952) and loosely applied to highly ornate architecture in a classical idiom that was fashionable in the eastern states of Australia between the late 1870s and early 1890s. The style was made possible by, and is to some extent an expression of, the financial boom that followed the discovery of gold in 1851. The climax of the boom was in the 1880s in Victoria, where the richest goldfields were located. The buildings most commonly associated with the Boom style are the richly decorated Italianate villas and speculative terrace houses of Melbourne. The English picturesque Italianate fashion had been introduced to Australia by the early 1840s but only reached its sumptuous apogee in Victoria in the late 1880s. The architecture is characterized by asymmetrical towers, balustraded parapets, polygonal bay windows and round-arched openings and arcades, though the terrace houses often lack the more elaborate features. The buildings were usually stuccoed and enriched with mass-produced Renaissance-style elements in cast cement. They frequently incorporate cast-iron filigree verandahs, prefabricated in sections. A typical stuccoed villa is Wardlow (1888), Carlton, Melbourne, by John Boyes. Other Italianate Boom style work was carried out in rich polychromatic brickwork, which was characteristic of Melbourne. The other fashionable idiom commonly included in the Boom style category is French Second Empire, employed for example at Labassa (1890), a lavish house in Caulfield, Melbourne, by John A. B. Koch, and the town hall (1883–5) at Bendigo by W. C. Vahland. The Boom style rapidly declined during the depression of the 1890s.
Bordone Paris (1500—71). Venetian painter, a pupil of Titian, whose style he followed closely. He worked in France tor King Francis I and later in Augsburg and Milan, painting portrait, religious, allegorical and mythological subjects including Fisherman presenting the Ring of St Mark to the Doge and Saluator Munch.
Borissov-Mussatov Victor (1870-1905). Russian painter. In Paris he worked in G. *Moreau's studio; *Puvis tie Chavannes made a great impression on him. He returned to Russia (1899), working near Saratov painting melancholy scenes of derelict classical mansions peopled by sad, crinolined figures. A lonely figure, both as artist and man, he was influential on the *Blue Rose Group.
Borromini Francesco (1599-1677). Architect.
Bosch Hieronymus, also called van Aeken (c. 1450—1516). Netherlands painter. Documentary evidence connects him at various periods between 1480 and 1516 with Ins birthplace Hcrtogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), where he belonged to the Brotherhood of the Holy Virgin; he designed the stained-glass windows and a crucifix for the Chapel of the Brotherhood (151 1-12) and was presumably a highly respected member of the community. He was referred to at his death as the 'famous artist', winch is borne out by a commission in ] 504 for a Ijist Judgment by Philip the Handsome of Burgundy. 13. was a religious painter with a strong bent towards satire, pessimistic comment and great interest in everyday life. This has made his work, a unity 111 form and content, one of the last profound expressions of the medieval world view. Landscape plays an important part in his compositions, it sets the mood and it is seen with directness. Religious iconography is reinterpreted freely in the mood of popular prints, and the unbridled fantasy of the artist explores, not so much the world of the subconscious but every thematic variation, allusion and symbol available to his contemporaries. These were not puzzle pictures in their time, but picture books which could be read and understood. Only when the tradition and the understanding were lost did they increasingly require interpretation of some kind, until in our own time, with the advent of Surrealism, attempts have been made to 'explain' B. by means of dream analysis. He was also referred to as a heretic by later generations. It is impossible to date and arrange his work in chronological sequence as much of his original work is now lost, many copies were made m his lifetime and even his signature forged. The Haywain and The Garden of Delights are triptychs fully authenticated and so is the table panel of the Esconal, which once belonged to Philip II as one of his intimate possessions. Other important paintings by B. are: Christ Mocked, and a portrayal of the Ship of Fools, a common contemporary theme.
Boscoreale. In 1900 were discovered 1st-c. Roman murals in a villa at this site near Pompeii.
Bosschaert Ambrosius (1573-1621). Flemish flower and still-life painter who spent most of his life in Holland and died at The Hague. B.'s works are exceptional m their subtlety of colour, their detail and finish.
Botero Fernando (1932- ). Colombian artist of recognizable 'fat' figures and exaggerated forms, initially influenced by *Goya and *Velazcjuez, e.g. Princess Margarita after Velasquez (I978)
Botticelli Sandro, born Alessandro Filipepi (c. 1445—1 5 10). Italian painter. Born in Florence, B. lived at the time of the city's greatest intellectual and artistic flowering, which coincides roughly with the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449—92). He was trained or influenced by Fra Filippo *Lippi and by the two Pollaiuolo brothers. In 1470 he painted the figure Fortitude, one of 7 'Virtues', commissioned from P. Pollaiuolo. Another teacher of influence was unquestionably Verrocchio. Thus B. was prepared for his career by those masters who represented all that was most vital in Florentine painting. To this he brought a rare talent for draughtsmanship and a very unusual temperament.
19th-c. writers on art have been responsible for creating an almost legendary figure, making B. the embodiment of the Renaissance painter: in tact, he was by no means typical. The picture of B. as a lyrical painter, bringing back to life the myths of the Golden Age of Greece must also be modified. It relies on those paintings B. was commissioned to paint by patrons such as Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his cousin, Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici who set the subjects from Poliziano, Marsiho Ficino and classical authors, and who restrained B.'s natural temperament. The most famous of these paintings of classical myths are The Birth of Venus, the Primavera, Pallas Subduing a Centaur and Venus and Mars. Thoughtful, but serene, they have coloured men's ideas about classical antiquity since they were painted. With the madonnas and such large works as The Adoration of the Magi, they are the best known of 13.'s works. IB. probably reveals himself more fully, however, in such paintings as The (Jalumuy of Apelles, another classical subject, where the story from l.ucian is told with effects that are strained to the point of frenzy. The drawn and troubled figure of the Baptist m the St Barnabas Altarpiece is obviously close in feeling to similar figures by A. Castagno, but there is something about it which disturbs the serenity of the whole picture. Such elements are even more pronounced in the Deposition and in the same subject in the Alte Pina., Munich. We know that when Savonarola proclaimed his religious crusade against the vanities of Renaissance Florence at the end of 15. s life, IB. became one of his followers. Very little is certain about his life that is not based upon Vasari, but it seems likely that in the Mystic Nativity which is dated 1500/1501, and which has an inscription referring to the Apocalypse and the 'troubles of Italy', the reconciliation between the angels and the fallen angels at the birth of Christ gives a significant clue to the divisions in B.'s own personality.
However great his inner turmoil, his life seems to have been relatively tranquil for the times. He won early recognition for his talent. Between 1481 and 1482 he was in Rome painting frescoes in the Sistine Chapel with a number of the leading painters. Vasari claims that he lost much of the reputation he had built up after this by taking time from painting to illustrate Dante. These drawings show an incredible gift for draughtmanship (Beatrice and Dante in Paradise). B. was prosperous enough by the end of the c. to be running a large workshop, but with the revolutions in painting brought about by Leonardo and Michelangelo, and his own ill-health in old age, B.'s popularity appears to have diminished. After his death he was often forged but seldom imitated.Boucher Francois (1703-70). French court painter and decorative artist, the truest exponent of the Rococo style. He studied under *Lemoyne and began working on engravings after Watteau. In Italy (1727-31) B. was influenced by Tiepolo. In the 1740s he obtained the patronage of Madame de Pompadour; he painted several portraits of her and through her influence became chief painter to Louis XV in 1765. His superficial but graceful, delicately coloured, frivolous and endlessly inventive variations on pastoral mythological themes were exactly attuned to the artificiality of Louis XV tastes. He also executed designs for Beauvais and Gobelins tapestries. *Fragonard was his pupil.
Bouguereau Adolphe William (1825-1905). The most revered French academic painter of his day. His harmony of composition and technical skill, as displayed in his female nudes, were superb but his subjects banal.
Boulanger Gustave (b Paris, 25 April 1824; d Paris, Oct 1888). French painter. Born of creole parents, Boulanger became an orphan at 14. His uncle and guardian sent him to the studio of Pierre-Jules Jollivet and then in 1840 to Paul Delaroche, whose prosaic Realism and dry, careful technique influenced Boulanger’s style of painting. A first visit to Algeria in 1845 gave him an interest in North African subjects, which was taken up later by his friend Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1849 he won the Prix de Rome with Ulysses Recognized by his Nurse (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.), in which he combined academic figure drawing with Pompeian touches inspired by Ingres’s Antiochus and Stratonice (1840; Chantilly, Mus. Condé). Boulanger’s knowledge of the ruins at Pompeii, which he visited while studying at the Ecole de Rome, gave him ideas for many future pictures, including the Rehearsal in the House of the Tragic Poet (1855; St Petersburg, Hermitage), in which the influence of Stratonice is still obvious. This was later developed into the Rehearsal of the ‘Flute Player’ and the ‘Wife of Diomedes’ (1861; Versailles, Château), which recorded the preparations being made for a performance given before the imperial Court in Napoleon’s mock-Pompeian Paris house. Boulanger specialized in painting studies of daily life from ancient Greece and Rome, as well as Arab subjects. He also painted a number of decorative schemes, at the theatre of the Casino in Monte Carlo (1879), at the Paris Opéra (1861–74) and other locations, opportunities gained through his friendship with CHARLES GARNIER, his fellow pensionnaire at the Ecole de Rome. He entered the Institut de France in 1882 and became an influential teacher, well known for his dislike of the Impressionists and their successors.
Bourdelle (Emile) Antoine (1861-1929). French sculptor, painter and designer, for several years Rodin's assistant. Rodin's influence can be seen in the strong lines and vigorous movement of B.'s work, e.g. Hercules the Archer (1909) but B. was also affected by his study of Greek and Egyptian art. His output includes frescoes and reliefs for the Theatre des Champs-Elysecs (1912), monumental work and many portrait busts.
Bourdon Sebastien (1616-71). French painter of portraits, historical and religious subjects and landscape. In Rome (1634-7) he executed pastiches after Castiglione, P. van Laer, Claude and N. Poussin. Returning to Paris, he gained a great reputation and was one of the founders of the Paris Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1648). From 1652 to 1654 he was court painter to Queen Christina of Sweden.
Bourgeois Louise (1911— ). French-born U.S. sculptor. She began her career as a painter and engraver. She turned to imaginative and highly individual carved sculpture in the late 1940s making abstract elongated forms and clustered groups of abstract shapes painted black and white. In the 1960s she turned to plaster for bronze (e.g. Labyrinthine Tower, 1963) creating anthropomorphic forms and inside-out shapes which evoke the human body, and which were subsequently worked in marble.
Bouts Dieric (c. 1415-75). Early Netherlands painter who united in his work the influence of the brothers Van Eyck and of Rogier van der Weyden, possibly his master. An objective painter, he was concerned with a detached observation of reality and an intellectual approach to spatial problems, to perspective and composition. This is evident in the liucharisl triptych where a contemporary banqueting scene is transformed by an austere geometry into the pathos of The Last Supper. The Hades panel of The List Judgement triptych reveals a more tender lyricism in expression and characterization of resignation and grace.
Bowers David, born 1956 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and graduated from art school in Pittsburgh in 1979. Fantastic art.
Boyer Rebekah. Neo-Figurative Art.
Bozic Tiffany. Surrealism.
Braccelli Giovanni Battista (1600-1650). Bizzarie di Varie Figure, 1624
Bramante Donato (1444—1514). Perhaps the greatest Italian architect of the High Renaissance, born near Urbino. He was a relation of Raphael and 1st trained as a painter.
When Pope Julius II demolished the thousand-year-old basilica of St Peter's, he commissioned 13. to design a new one (begun in 1506). B.'s plan has been obscured by later work, though Michelangelo used as much of it as he could. What the interior would have looked like can be seen in Raphael's painting The School of Athens.
Bramantino (b ?Milan, c. 1465; d Milan, 1530). Italian painter and architect. He was one of the leading artists in Milan in the early 16th century. His early training as a goldsmith may indicate a relatively late start to his activity as a painter, and none of his work may be dated before 1490. The style of his early work parallels that of such followers of Vincenzo Foppa as Bernardino Butinone, Bernardo Zenale and Giovanni Donato da Montorfano. He assumed the name Bramantino very early in his career, indicating that he was in close contact with Donato Bramante, whose influence is uppermost in his early work. Probably his earliest surviving painting is the Virgin and Child (Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). It is an adaptation of a type of half-length Virgin with standing Christ Child well known in Milan. The linear emphasis and the dramatic treatment of light are aspects derived from Bramante’s work. Bramantino stressed graphic quality in this picture, and throughout his early work he was considerably influenced by Andrea Mantegna and by the visual aspects of prints. His Risen Christ (Madrid, Mus. Thyssen–Bornemisza) derives from Bramante’s Christ at the Column (c. 1490; Milan, Brera) but has a more precise musculature and a much harder use of line. The conception of the figure set against a rocky background, derived from Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (versions, London, N.G.; Paris, Louvre), also indicates Bramantino’s persistently eclectic nature.
Brancusi Constantm (1876—1957). One of the outstanding sculptors of the 20th c, born 111 Rumania and trained initially as a carpenter and stonemason. He studied sculpture at Bucharest (1898-1902) and in 1904 settled in Paris for life. Here he soon shared the interest, common among Parisian artists, in African and other primitive arts, but the most absorbing influence on him was his native folk art and oriental art. Primarily a carver of wood and stone, he worked towards expressive strength through formal simplification, and The Kiss (1908) is in some ways a sculptural counterpart to Picasso's Demoiselles D'Avigtwn of 1907. But, unlike Picasso, B. always retained in his carvings something of the mystic symbolism of non-European mainstream art. Le Nouveau-Ne (1915) and Le Commencement du monde (1924) are universal symbols of life and fertility — simple but never symmetrical or geometrical. His Lndless Column (1937—8) is a turning point in 20th-c. sculpture: B.'s influence on it is two-told. He brought about a revival of carving and had a craftsmanlike respect for the nature of his materials; his last years were devoted to polishing the surface of earlier works, e.g. Fish (1940s). Secondly, be endowed sculpture with an almost sacred significance: his carvings are objects for contemplation. 'B.'s mission was to make us shape-conscious' (Henry Moore).
Brandt Bill (1904 – 1983) was an influential British photographer and photojournalist known for his high-contrast images of British society and his distorted nudes and landscapes. (Surrealism - photographers).Born in Hamburg, Germany, son of a British father and German mother, Brandt grew up during World War I. Shortly after the war, he contracted tuberculosis and spent much of his youth in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. He traveled to Vienna to undertake a course of treatment for TB by psychoanalysis. He was in any case pronounced cured and began an apprenticeship in a portrait studio in the city. When Ezra Pound visited a mutual friend, Eugenie Schwarzwald, Brandt made his portrait. In appreciation, Pound offered Brandt an introduction to Man Ray, in whose Paris studio, Brandt would assist in 1930.In 1933 Brandt moved to London and began documenting all levels of British society. This kind of documentary was uncommon at that time. Brandt published two books showcasing this work, The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938). He was a regular contributor to magazines such as Lilliput, Picture Post, and Harper's Bazaar. He documented the Underground bomb shelters of London during The Blitz in 1940, commissioned by the Ministry of Information.During World War II, Brandt focused every kind of subject - as can be seen in his "Camera in London" (1948) but excelled in portraiture and landscape. To mark the arrival of peace in 1945 he began a celebrated series of nudes. His major books from the post-war period are Literary Britain (1951), and Perspective of Nudes (1961), followed by a compilation of the best of all areas of his work, Shadow of Light (1966). Brandt became Britain's most influential and internationally admired photographer of the 20th century. Many of his works have important social commentary but also poetic resonance. His landscapes and nudes are dynamic, intense and powerful, often using wide-angle lenses and distortion.
Braque Georges (1882—1963). French painter. He was born in Argenteuil. At Le Havre, from 1889, he worked as apprentice to his father, a house painter. He moved to Pans in 1900 and then studied at the free Academie Humbert (1902—4). In 1905 he was deeply impressed by the room of *Fauve paintings at the Salon d'Automne (including Matisse, Derail] and B.'s friends from Le Havre, Fnesz and Dufy). The landscapes that B. painted (1906—7) at Antwerp (e.g. Harbour Scene, Antwerp, 1906), L'Estaque and Le Ciotat are in freely broken strokes of strong colour. B. considered these his 1st creative works.
In 1907, like so many of his generation, he was overwhelmed by the Cezanne Memorial Exhibition at the Salon d'Automne and this revelation was followed by his meeting with Picasso and the disconcerting distortions of the Demoiselles d'Avignon. B.'s ruthlessly simplified sombre-coloured landscapes and figures, e.g. Nude (1907—8), of the next 2 years show the extent of his change of direction and prepare the way for the development of Cubism. B. is credited with the introduction into Cubist painting of typography (in Le Porlugais, 191 1) and of the decorator's techniques of wood-graining and marbling, but Cubism was essentially the product of a remarkable partnership with Picasso ('marriage' was Picasso's word) which was broken by the war and B.'s call up in 1914. Cubism established above all the self-sufficient existence of the work of art, independent of reality, that was implicit in Cezanne's late landscapes. In looking beyond the superficial appearance of their subjects, Picasso and B. created a precedent which has contributed in one way or another to most subsequent developments in European painting and sculpture, both figurative and abstract.
Seriously injured in 1915, B. returned to Paris in 1917 where, apart from summers at Varengeville, he spent the rest of his life. His earliest post-war paintings returned to synthetic Cubism with a stronger palette; La Musicienne (1917-18).
From 1920, although still related to his Cubist experience in their formal improvisation, his paintings are less obviously disciplined. The qualities which distinguished his Cubist paintings from Picasso's — his fluent painterliness and his natural ability as a rich but subtle colourist — predominate in a work like Guitar and Jug (1927). The still-life remained his principal theme from the (Jueridon series (1927—30) to the climactic A teller series (1949—55) '" which the scope of the still-life extends to include the studio, the artist, his model and even the painting itself. The mysterious presence of the bird in flight is gently evocative in this as in other works by B., and the mood of his whole oeuvre - apart from his shortlived excursion into Surrealism in the early 1930s — is serene and harmonious.