View of Collioure. Andre Derain. Size: 26 X 32 and 3/8 in. Date: 1905. Museum: Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.
The View of Collioure shows us a painting of Oil on canvas. A painting called a Fauve or “wild beast”. It’s a painting that is based upon a small port or village on the Mediterranean coast off of France. Derain places the viewer in a position that we can look down or in the distance from above, he shows us numerous hills and grass, a brick wall with trees and the port located behind it with the ocean and sky beyond that. Derain uses vibrant colors in orange and red to visualize the grasses and hills. He uses emphasis with the bright colors, as well as a feeling of visual texture in a way, that we can almost feel the texture of the painting. The painting is full of lines through the way he used the stroke of the painting to depict the grasses, trees and the port. He used red to point out the top of the houses. In the sky is colored light blue with some dark blue mixed in to maybe show clouds. The tops of the trees are green which are between the sky and ocean. The brick wall is colored in light brown or grayish colors. Derain’s use of complementary colors (red/green)(blue/orange) allows the viewer to feel the intensity, emotion and warmth that the painting portrays in the way of feeling the warmth from the sun as well as the ocean breeze or air. Derain uses short strokes of the paint brush and instead of mixing the paint, he sometimes used it straight from the tubes.
Derain worked with numerous paintings of Van Gogh, in the way he painted his painting through short brush strokes. Van Gogh’s paintings dealt a lot with poverty and poor to which he related. I think that Derain also experienced a deal of this, so that’s why he related many paintings to Van Gogh’s. I think Derain wanted to show a place where the people could experience condolence or relief from reality and feel the beauty or majestic peace that nature gives.
“Fauvism’s greatest in depth achievement was the painting of the landscape. The mood of the fauvist landscape, its real celebration of landscape, of the delights of a colorful vacationers world, an intensified impressionist painting.”
Title: A Preview of “The Wild Beasts’: Fauvism and its Affinities”
Author: MOMA (JSTOR)
Source: Museum of Modern Art, No.7 (Spring 1976), pp. 1-2.
