André Derain (; ; 17 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder, with Henri Matisse, of Fauvism. His paintings of 1905–1906 are characterized by riotous colourism in the Fauve style. By 1910, however, his work had become more austere as a result of his study of Cézanne and the old masters. After the First World War, Derain became one of the leaders of the new classicism in the arts known as the Return to order.

Life and career

Early years

Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. In 1895 he began to study on his own, contrary to claims that meeting Vlaminck or Matisse began his efforts to paint, and occasionally went to the countryside with an old friend of Cézanne's, Father Jacomin along with his two sons. In 1898, while studying to be an engineer at the Académie Camillo, he attended painting classes under Eugène Carrière, and there met Matisse. In 1900, he met and shared a studio with Maurice de Vlaminck and together they began to paint scenes in the neighbourhood, but this was interrupted by military service at Commercy from September 1901 to 1904. Following his release from service, Matisse persuaded Derain's parents to allow him to abandon his engineering career and devote himself solely to painting; subsequently Derain attended the .

Fauvism

thumb|240px|left|Le séchage des voiles (The Drying Sails), 1905, oil on canvas, 82 × 101 cm, [[Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne]]

Derain and Matisse worked together through the summer of 1905 in the Mediterranean village of Collioure and Derain completed the Mountains at Collioure painting. Later that year they displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. The vivid, unnatural colors led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to derisively dub their works as les Fauves, or "the wild beasts", marking the start of the Fauvist movement. (In 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, co-organized and exhibited Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism, an exhibit examining their work together and the birth of Fauvism.)

In March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to produce a series of paintings with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of which are still extant), Derain presented a portrait of London that was radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as Whistler or Monet. With bold colors and compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge. These London paintings remain among his most popular work. Art critic T. G Rosenthal: "Not since Monet has anyone made London seem so fresh and yet remain quintessentially English. Some of his views of the Thames use the Pointillist technique of multiple dots, although by this time, because the dots have become much larger, it is rather more simply the separation of colours called Divisionism and it is peculiarly effective in conveying the fragmentation of colour in moving water in sunlight."

thumb|Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, [[National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.]]

thumb|La jetée à L'Estaque, 1906, oil on canvas, 38 × 46 cm

In 1907 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler purchased Derain's entire studio, granting Derain financial stability. He experimented with stone sculpture and moved to Montmartre to be near his friend Pablo Picasso and other noted artists. Fernande Olivier, Picasso's mistress at the time, described Derain as:

<blockquote>Slim, elegant, with a lively colour and enamelled black hair. With an English chic, somewhat striking. Fancy waistcoats, ties in crude colours, red and green. Always a pipe in his mouth, phlegmatic, mocking, cold, an arguer.</blockquote>

At Montmartre, Derain began to shift from the brilliant Fauvist palette to more muted tones, showing the influence of Cubism and Paul Cézanne. (According to Gertrude Stein, Derain may have been influenced by African sculpture before Picasso.) Derain supplied woodcuts in primitivist style for an edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's first book of prose, L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909). He displayed works at the Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich in 1910, in 1912 at the secessionist Der Blaue Reiter and in 1913 at the seminal Armory Show in New York. He also illustrated a collection of poems by Max Jacob in 1912.

Towards a new classicism

At about this time Derain's work began overtly reflecting his study of the Old Masters. The role of colour was reduced and forms became austere; the years 1911–1914 are sometimes referred to as his gothic period. In 1914 he was mobilized for military service in World War I and until his release in 1919 he would have little time for painting, although in 1916 he provided a set of illustrations for André Breton's first book, Mont de Piete.

After the war, Derain won new acclaim as a leader of the renewed classicism then ascendant. With the wildness of his Fauve years far behind, he was admired as an upholder of tradition. In 1919 he designed the ballet La Boutique fantasque for Diaghilev, leader of the Ballets Russes. A major success, it would lead to his creating many ballet designs.

The 1920s marked the height of his success, as he was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 1928 for his Still-life with Dead Game and began to exhibit extensively abroad—in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, New York City and Cincinnati, Ohio.

A year before his death, he contracted an eye infection from which he never fully recovered. He died in Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France in 1954 when he was struck by a moving vehicle.

Derain's London paintings were the subject of a major exhibition at the Courtauld Institute from 27 October 2005 to 22 January 2006.

In 2025, all of Derain's work entered the public domain in the United States.

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Self-portrait in studio by André Derain.jpg|Self-portrait in studio, , oil on canvas, 42.2 × 34.6&nbsp;cm, National Gallery of Australia

File:Montagnes à Collioure, par André Derain.jpg | Mountains at Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, 81.3 × 100.3 cm, National Gallery of Art

André Derain, 1907, Pinède à Cassis (Landscape), oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm, Musée Cantini, Marseille.jpg|Pinède à Cassis (Landscape), 1907, oil on canvas, 54 × 65&nbsp;cm, Musée Cantini, Marseille

André Derain, 1907, Paysage à Cassis, oil on canvas, 54 x 64 cm, Musée d'art moderne de Troyes.jpg|Paysage à Cassis, 1907, oil on canvas, 54 × 64&nbsp;cm, Musée d'art moderne de Troyes

Brooklyn Museum - Landscape in Provence (Paysage de Provence) - André Derain.jpg|Landscape in Provence (Paysage de Provence), c. 1908, oil on canvas, 32.2 × 40.6&nbsp;cm, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn

André Derain, c.1908, Baigneuses (Esquisse), oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.jpg|Baigneuses (Esquisse), , oil on canvas, 38 × 46&nbsp;cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

André Derain, 1910, View of Cagnes, oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.jpg|View of Cagnes, 1910, oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany

André Derain, 1911, La Table (The Table), oil on canvas, 96.5 x 131.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|La Table (The Table), 1911, oil on canvas, 96.5 × 131.1&nbsp;cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

André Derain, 1911, The Last Supper, oil on canvas, 227.3 x 288.3 cm, Art Institute of Chicago.jpg|The Last Supper, 1911, oil on canvas, 227.3 × 288.3&nbsp;cm, Art Institute of Chicago

André Derain, 1912, Window on the Park (La Fênetre sur le parc), 130.8 x 89.5 cm (51.5 x 35.25 in), Museum of Modern Art, NY.jpg|Window on the Park (La Fenêtre sur le parc), 1912, oil on canvas, 130.8 × 89.5&nbsp;cm, Museum of Modern Art

André Derain, 1912, Nature morte (Still Life), oil on canvas, 100.5 x 118 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Reproduced in Du Cubisme, 1912.jpg|Nature morte (Still Life), 1912, oil on canvas, 100.5 × 118&nbsp;cm, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Reproduced in Du "Cubisme", 1912

Derain, Saturday.jpg|Le Samedi, 1913–14, oil on canvas, 181 × 228&nbsp;cm, Pushkin Museum, Moscow

Derain - Portrait of a Girl in Black (1913).jpg|Portrait of a Girl in Black, 1913, Hermitage Museum

Derain - Portrait of a Man with a Newspaper.jpg|Portrait of a Man with a Newspaper, 1911–1914, Hermitage Museum

André Derain, 1907 (Automne), Nu debout, limestone, 95 x 33 x 17 cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne.jpg|Nu debout, 1907 (Automne), limestone, 95 x 33 x 17&nbsp;cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne

André Derain, photograph published in Gelett Burgess, The Wild Men of Paris, Architectural Record, May 1910, sculpture-Nu debout (Standing Woman), 1907.jpg|Photograph of Derain published in Gelett Burgess, "The Wild Men of Paris", Architectural Record, May 1910. Sculpture: Nu debout (Standing Woman), 1907

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Nazi-looted art

In 2020, a French court ordered that three paintings by Derain, Paysage à Cassis (ou Vue de Cassis), La Chapelle-sous-Crécy were restituted and Pinède, Cassis should be restituted to the heirs of René Gimpel, from whom they had been looted during the Nazi occupation of France. Gimpel's family had submitted the claim in 2013. In 2023 Derain's Still Life With a Bottle was restituted to the heirs of Dane Reichsmann, who was murdered in Auschwitz with his wife.

Public collections

Among the public collections holding works by André Derain are:

  • Brooklyn Museum
  • Buffalo AKG Art Museum
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Gent
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

References

Further reading

  • Amory, Dita and Ann Dumas (2023).  Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism.  Metropolitan Museum of Art.  . Exhibition catalog for show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (exhibited 13 October 2023–21 January 2024) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (exhibited 25 February–27 May 2024).
  • Clement, Russell (1994). Les Fauves: A Sourcebook. Greenwood Press. .
  • Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910–1930. London: Tate Gallery.
  • Diehl, Gaston (1977). Derain. Crown Publishers, Inc. .
  • Hamilton, George Heard (1993). Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880–1940. Yale University Press. .
  • Sotriffer, Kristian (1972). Expressionism and Fauvism. McGraw-Hill. .
  • André Derain at the National Gallery of Art
  • Works by André Derain (public domain in Canada)
  • André Derain exhibition catalogs
  • Gelett Burgess, "The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves", 1910, Architectural Record
  • André Derain, Museums and Public Art Galleries Worldwide, Artcyclopedia