The Large Trees

1903–1904

Académie Humbert: meets Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia

The year after receiving his decorator's certificate, Braque enrolled at the Académie Humbert in Paris and painted there until 1904; there he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.

1905

Conversion to Fauvism

Braque's earliest works were Impressionist, but after seeing the Fauves — Matisse, Derain and others — exhibited in 1905, he adopted their brilliant colour. He worked most closely with his fellow natives of Le Havre, Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, developing a somewhat more subdued Fauvism.

1906

With Othon Friesz to L'Estaque and Antwerp

In 1906 Braque travelled with Friesz to paint in L'Estaque, in Antwerp and back home in Le Havre. The same year produced Seascape, L'Estaque, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

May 1907

Success at the Salon des Indépendants

In May 1907 Braque successfully exhibited Fauvist works at the Salon des Indépendants.

October – November 1907

Meets Pablo Picasso

In the autumn of 1907 Braque visited Picasso's studio, and after the meeting sharply changed his manner, striving for economy of means and geometric forms (another view holds that the encounter rather accelerated and intensified his pursuit of Cézanne's ideas).

14 November 1908

Exhibition at Kahnweiler's and Vauxcelles's “cubes”

Reviewing Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery, the critic Louis Vauxcelles called him a daring man who despises form, “reducing everything, places and figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes”.