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Lot Essay
In 1907, Derain wrote to Maurice de Vlaminck that he was considering settling permanently in the south of France, where he had previously worked. While he remained based in Paris, he spent an extended period in Martigues, a small fishing village west of Marseilles, from May to November 1908. In a letter to Vlaminck he wrote, "I am going to work seriously, and essentially become a painter again. In short, it is difficult to make paintings in Paris. One loses any point of contact. And I believe that here is the only place where all one has are the sensations of a painter" (quoted in J. Freeman, The Fauve Landscape, exh. cat., The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1990, p. 110).
Painted under the influence of Paul Cézanne, who was given a posthumous retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907, Derain's Martigues landscapes display a growing interest in a constructive approach to forms. During this time Derain, renounced the coloristic expression of Henri Matisse, and adopted a more restrained palette, in which he contrasted warm, golden tonalities against dark blues and greens. The present painting was probably done during the latter part of Derain's stay in Martigues, following a visit in late August or early September with Pablo Picasso, who was working that summer, painting mainly landscapes, in La Rue-de-Bois, a small rural village north of Paris. Derain's later Martigues paintings reflected Picasso's recent landscapes in their concern with deeper space, expressed in angular forms, in contrast to the flattened space that had characterized Derain's Fauve pictures of 1905-1907. Derain now allied himself with Picasso and Georges Braque, the latter also a former Fauve painter. John Richardson has written, "Derain became Picasso's yardstick. Until the outbreak of World War I, he would be the norm against which Picasso would measure the progress he was making as a cubist" (in A Life of Picasso, Vol. II, 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 77). Jane Lee has stated that "Derain's works of these five years are among the finest landscape paintings of the pre-war avant-garde. At the same time they are the most serious and consistent review of the work of Paul Cézanne--the mainstay and the measure of all of the Cézannisme in Paris between 1908 and 1914 (in Derain, New York, 1990, p. 28).
Painted under the influence of Paul Cézanne, who was given a posthumous retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907, Derain's Martigues landscapes display a growing interest in a constructive approach to forms. During this time Derain, renounced the coloristic expression of Henri Matisse, and adopted a more restrained palette, in which he contrasted warm, golden tonalities against dark blues and greens. The present painting was probably done during the latter part of Derain's stay in Martigues, following a visit in late August or early September with Pablo Picasso, who was working that summer, painting mainly landscapes, in La Rue-de-Bois, a small rural village north of Paris. Derain's later Martigues paintings reflected Picasso's recent landscapes in their concern with deeper space, expressed in angular forms, in contrast to the flattened space that had characterized Derain's Fauve pictures of 1905-1907. Derain now allied himself with Picasso and Georges Braque, the latter also a former Fauve painter. John Richardson has written, "Derain became Picasso's yardstick. Until the outbreak of World War I, he would be the norm against which Picasso would measure the progress he was making as a cubist" (in A Life of Picasso, Vol. II, 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 77). Jane Lee has stated that "Derain's works of these five years are among the finest landscape paintings of the pre-war avant-garde. At the same time they are the most serious and consistent review of the work of Paul Cézanne--the mainstay and the measure of all of the Cézannisme in Paris between 1908 and 1914 (in Derain, New York, 1990, p. 28).