Framed Etching, Signed, Portrait du peintre Georges Braque, Harald Sallberg

Plate dimensions approx. 24.5x31.8 cm.
Frame dimensions approx. 42x47 cm.
 
Harald Sallberg
Portrait du peintre Georges Braque, Paris, 1929
Etching, signed
This etching was made in Paris in 1929 and depicts Georges Braque, shown seated and introspective. Sallberg presents Braque as a private figure rather than a public modernist, relaxed but inward, his gaze held in thought.
Lightly sketched forms in the background echo Cubist ideas without overt quotation, allowing the portrait to remain grounded in observation. The balance between figure and abstraction is carefully judged and deliberately restrained.
Harald Sallberg was living and working in Paris at this time, moving within the city’s artistic networks. As with his portrait of Fernand Léger from the same year, this work reflects an artist-to-artist encounter shaped by proximity rather than commission.
The result is a measured, human portrait of a major modernist, seen without myth or display.