The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Basket of Anemones

1924

Georges Braque

(French, 1882–1963)
France, 20th century
oil on canvas
Unframed: 21 x 65.4 cm (8 1/4 x 25 3/4 in.)
Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.103
© Artists Right Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The flowering plant genus Anemone blooms in a wide variety of colors from red to blue; however, Braque opted to paint the flowers in a muted, neutral Cubist color palette.

Description

In the early 1920s, Braque painted a series of still lifes notable for their focus on a few objects compressed into a dense space. This still life features a brown wicker basket with five or six flowers packed into a horizontal format. The basket dominates the space by its size and central placement. The absence of a conventional foreground is striking. Rather than recede into space, the tabletop is tilted upright so it exists on the same vertical plane as the gray wall. A decorator’s comb was used to create the wood grain pattern in the tabletop.
  • Gottlieb F. Reber [1880–1959], Barmen and Lausanne
    Dr. W. Chiodera, Küsnacht, Switzerland
    June 26, 1989
    (Sold at Christie's, London, United Kingdom, June 26, 1989, lot 37)
    November 9, 2000
    (Sold at Christie's, New York, NY, November 9, 2000, lot 237)
    2000–2002
    (Richard Feigen Gallery, New York, NY)
    ?–2020
    Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    2020–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    Provenance Footnotes
    1 According to Dorothy Kosinski, “G. F. Reber: Collector of Cubism,” Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1061 (August 1991), p. 529. 
    2 Dimensions given as “7 7/8 x 25 5/8 in (20 x 65 cm)”
    3 According to documentation in the curatorial file supplied by Richard Feigen Gallery.
  • Kosinski, Dorothy. "G. F. Reber: Collector of Cubism." The Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1061 (August 1991): 519-531. Mentioned: P. 529 www.jstor.org
    Robinson, William H. "Modern European Painting." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 132-139, 142-149. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 144-145; Mentioned: p. 257-258
  • Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
    None known
  • {{cite web|title=Basket of Anemones|url=false|author=Georges Braque|year=1924|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.103