When poet Francis Ponge collaborated with painter Georges Braque on the first publication of his drawings in 1950, they selected this work, which was then in the Collection Maeght. For Braque, drawings were usually preparatory, “executed with an eye on a painting to come, or during its composition,” as Ponge writes. They were vehicles of innovation, which contributed to Braque’s ability to modernize art and, together with Pablo Picasso, bring it into the “era of the automobile.” Following the catastrophic experience of World War I, in which Braque was severely wounded, he and others of his generation developed a new interest in the figure and the tradition of classicism that reflected a “return to order.”