Water-Bottle and Lemon

By 1916 the First World War had emptied Paris of many of Gris's friends. Braque and other painters were at the front, some already wounded, while Gris, a Spanish citizen, was not called up and stayed in the city through the hardest years, often short of money and materials. This small, sober still life belongs to that time. A water bottle and a single lemon sit on a table, built from firm interlocking planes in muted greys and browns with a little yellow. The mood is far calmer than the war around it, ordered and still, the objects fitted together like pieces of stonework. It is the same tabletop world he had always painted, now pared down and steadied. The lemon is the one clear spot of colour, a small bright disc against the grey.