The Castle: La Roche Guyon

May 1907

Success at the Salon des Indépendants

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

September 1907

The Cézanne retrospective changes his course

The large, museum-like retrospective at the Salon d'Automne of Paul Cézanne, who had died in 1906, deeply affected the Paris avant-garde and led to the advent of Cubism; under its influence Braque's style began a slow evolution.

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”.

1909–1912

Creates Cubism together with Picasso

From 1909 to 1912 (other accounts say from as early as 1908) Braque worked with Picasso on the theoretical foundations of Cubism and became one of the movement's founders; for many years their paintings of the period were indistinguishable. Braque likened their partnership to being roped together on a mountain.

summer 1911

Summer in Céret, side by side with Picasso

The summer of 1911 was decisive for Cubism: Braque and Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, and their canvases of that time are hard, sometimes virtually impossible, to tell apart.