George Braque (1882-1963) French, Lithograph. 1968 Lithograph. Titled 'Barque Sur Les Galets'. Signed in the lower left. Overall Size: 14 3/4 x 20 1/4 in. Sight Size: 8 3/4 x 14 in. #1099 . Georges Braque is known for Cubist interior and still-life painting, collage, lithography. Georges Braque was born on May 13, 1882 in Argenteuil, France, where his parents ran a paint shop. He was brought up in Le Havre. His father was a house painter at that time, and he encouraged the boy's attempts to draw. Georges also took music lessons from Raoul Dufy's flutist brother, Pierre, which resulted in Braque's continuous love of music; he played several instruments. A slow deliberate student, Braque accomplished nothing much until he became, at age twenty, the youngest member of the group known as the Fauves and first came into prominence in 1906 as a Fauve painter. However he was unhappy with his first canvases in the new style and subsequently destroyed them because they were too realistic for him. With Orthon Friesz, an old friend from Le Havre, Braque went to Antwerp where he began to lighten his palette. In 1908, Braque produced his first Cubist canvases to which the lessons of Fauvism contributed. Braque with Picasso was one of the founders of Cubism- that style of painting which became the dominant style for the first half of the 20th century. The twenty-five year old Braque visited the twenty-six year old Picasso in his studio in November 1907. There he saw the huge and shocking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Braque's responded: "It is as if someone had drunk kerosene to spit fire." Braque was called the moon to Picasso's sun in their partnership. Picasso had a healthy head start but after setting up in L'Estaque in the south of France during the summer of 1908, Braque took the lead. He solidified and refined cubism's multiple viewpoints and spacial ambiguity. The collaboration then began in earnest. In appearance, Braque differed from Picasso. Braque was a tall stocky fellow; Picasso was short, but solid. Unlike Picasso's revolving-door sex life, in 1912, Braque found one wife, Marcelle Lapre, decided he liked her and stayed with her for more than fifty years. Like his paintings, Braque was a man of many facets. He was an avid swimmer, a boxer and a wrestler. He played the accordion; he drove speedy sports cars until age finally slowed him down; and he was known as a good dancer.