Works by André Derain

André Derain painted the Thames pale yellow under a sky of orange and blue, then within a few years turned to muted colour and the lessons of the old masters.

In the summer of 1905 he and Henri Matisse painted side by side in Collioure, a Mediterranean village, and that autumn their pictures at the Salon d'Automne led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to mock them as les Fauves, the wild beasts. In Mountains at Collioure the trees are red trunks under dabs of blue and green, before orange and violet-blue hills. The same year he painted Matisse, the face built from patches of orange, pink and green, a red pipe stem cutting through the beard. After Monet's Thames views had sold well, the dealer Ambroise Vollard sent him to paint London; in St. Paul's Cathedral seen from the Thames the dome is blue and boats of red and blue crowd the yellow water.

Portraits and landscapes make up most of the works here. By 1910 his work had turned austere and his colour subdued, as he studied Paul Cézanne and the old masters. The Bagpiper of 1910–11 puts a piper on a path near a tall tree, with red roofs and water below; its museum text sees Cézanne in it, and the shepherd scenes of Titian and Claude Lorrain. The Two Sisters of 1914, possibly his wife Alice and her sister, sit and stand against a grey wall with long, still faces. After the war he was counted a classicist; in Harlequin of 1923 a young man in red, green and yellow diamonds rests his hands on a guitar.

Sources: Wikipedia, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Minneapolis Institute of Art, National Gallery of Art, Tate.