Twentieth-Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Vol. 1, Painting, 1905-1945
Comparables: Other Derain Paintings
1.
Title:
Bateaux a Collioure
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Size:
18¼ x 24 in. (46.3 x 61 cm.)
Date:
circa 1905
Markings:
Signed a ‘Derain’ (lower right)
Sold For:
USD7,038,300. Sale of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art (Evening Sale): June 18, 2007, [Lot 5: Bateaux à Collioure.]
2.
Title:
Bateaux au Port de Collioure
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Size:
18 1/4 x 15 in. (46.3 x 38 cm.)
Date:
circa 1905
Markings:
Signed ‘Derain’ (lower right)
Sold For:
USD 4,366,988; Sale of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art (Evening Sale): February 4, 2015, [Lot 3: Bateaux au Port de Collioure].
Analysis
“Fishing Boats, Collioure” is a work with typical features that best embodies the agreeable characters of its creator of Andre Derain, a French artist, painter and sculptor who founded Fauvism with another French artist Henri Matisse, and explored cubism with Picasso.1 When he was living, Derain was honored as the greatest painter in France, but forgotten for a long time when he died. Giacometti claimed him as the bravest man, 2because he could seek concise and fresh approaches when facsimileing works by masters.3 The painting of “Fishing Boats, Collioure” makes a classic by Andre Derain: Colors are raised into an independent status, with red, yellow, blue, and green each made imposing but all being harmonious.
By fusing impressionism and neo impressionism into works, Derain obviously made his works with a strong sense of compromise. The approaches of his artistic expression, and spatial processing and modeling date back to classical rules, while his color treatment is similar to neo impressionism. This indicates that Andre Derain realizes the combination of the tradition and the modern. 40 years after his death, Paris Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition for him. But Sotheby’s New York on May 9, 2016 undertook abortive auction for its traditional strong items of impressionism, in which almost one of three of auction items failed to sell; the most popular two paintings are “Sous-Bois (Paysage)” by Maurice de Vlaminck and “Maisons du Port, Saint-Tropez” by Paul Signac, which were only respectively priced at $16, 400,000 and $10,700,000.
Several p
