Castle at La Roche-Guyon is the only painting in Russia by George Braque. It belongs to the period of early Cubism. Under the artist’s brush, the castle standing on a cliff turns into a crystalline rock, while the structure of this rock influences everything, even the sky. Braque does not paint objects precisely — he “chisels” them using notch-like brush strokes, restricting the forms of the real world with a geometrical basis: a building becomes a cube, tree trunks turn into cylinders. This search for simplification and crystallization of forms was influenced by Cézanne. The artist looks at objects from different views, which makes the painting composition dynamic and materializes the space. Braque often said that materialization of space was the most important goal of Cubism. He called this space “manual, but touchable.” The composition is based on the exquisite combination of gray, green, yellow, and brown tones, which is quite typical for the artist.