Mountains at Collioure, Derain, 1905

       French artist André Derain (1880-1954) painted this lovely image in 1905. Today, it is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The painting is in the style of Fauvism (1904-1908), which used bright, energetic, and clashing colors and short, thick brushstrokes to convey liveliness (at least in this work). Fauvism means “Wild Beasts”, which was an insult because the Parisian gallery-goers didn’t like the wild, free application of color in the early 1900s. Before this, the Paris Salon and “high art” dominated the art scene (i.e. peaceful landscapes, elegant nudes). Matisse, a fellow artist who spearheaded the Fauvist movement with Derain, had several colorful paintings including “Woman with a Hat” (which also caused a scandal) and “L’Atelier Rouge”. Derain’s work depicts the landscape of Collioure, a French seaside town close to Perpignan. Instantly, the viewer is assailed with the inharmonious colors such as green, red, orange, and blue. The grass and trees are painted with tiny strokes that look like “sticks of dynamite,” as Derain famously said. The tiny strokes are contrasted with the sloping mountains behind, which are painted as broad, flat color planes with thick outlines. There is no shadowing to suggest distance but rather meandering lines and unique shapes. “Mountains at Collioure” is Derain’s emotional response to seeing the Mountains; he was expressing the inner vigor of the objects around him rather than what they actually looked like (non-representational). The sky is a mess of blues, but light is indicated by the large yellow oval in the upper left and the white spaces in between the vivid colors. Also, there is an interesting purple band near the bottom of the painting to suggest some distance and depth behind the orange-trunked tree. Overall, Fauvism was one of the first truly modern styles, and it broke the ice in art so new movements such as Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, and Cubism could flourish. This painting is also similar to the style of impressionists and their sketchy application of color, although they depicted how light affects objects and didn’t use radical colors.

Sources:

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/henri-matisse/woman-with-hat-1905