André Derain (Primary Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
In July 1905, the French artist André Derain (1880–1954) visited his former teacher Henri Matisse in the small French fishing village of Collioure, where they embarked on an extremely productive pictorial collaboration based upon their shared quest for pure liberated color. The resulting paintings, along with those of their mutual friend Maurice de Vlaminck, came to define the style known today as Fauvism. However, over the ensuing decades, Derain moved away from using startling color contrasts and agitated brushwork and instead became increasingly interested in the art of the past, especially the French landscape tradition exemplified by the paintings of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Gellée (Claude Lorrain). By 1933, when Derain sat for this portrait, he was an uncompromising champion of technical dexterity and classicizing subject matter in painting, while seemingly oblivious to the numerous detractors of his retrograde pastiches of traditional French painting.
Gift of Timothy Baum
Man Ray: The Paris Years, VMFA, October 30, 2021 – February 21, 2022
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