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ANDRE DERAIN
Portrait of Matisse/Portrait de Matisse (1905)
Oil on pale coffee-color primed canvas, primed on front face only
46cm x 35cm/18 1/8 in X 13 3/4 in

Born in 1880 at Chatou, one of the old Impressionist haunts near Bougival, west of Paris, Andre
Derain began painting at the age of 15. In 1898, he attended life classes at the independent Academic Camillo in Paris, where the Symbolist painter Eugene Carriere (1849- 1906) taught regularly, and met two of the future Fauve painters, Henri Matisse and Jean Puy (1876-1960). In June 1900, on a sub-urban train, Derain met Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958), a neighbor from Chatou with whom he established an immediate friendship, and the two young artists set up a communal studio. Vlaminck was also to become a Fauve painter. In 1901, at the important exhibition of paintings by van Gogh - who was a great influence on the Fauves - Derain introduced Vlaminck to Matisse. From late 1901 to late 1904, Derain's career was brought to a halt by his military service, but he returned to Chatou and to painting in September 1904.

1905 was the crucial year in the develop-ment of the Fauve style, and it was at the historic September exhibition of independent artists, called the Autumn Salon, that the title 'Fauve' was coined. During that summer, Mat-isse and Derain worked together in the south of France at Collioure, the Mediterranean port that had been 'discovered' by Signac in 1887.
The Fauve style is usually defined in terms of liberated bright color, but - unlike the earlier
Neo-Impressionist, or the later Cubist styles - its exponents had no specific platform of theor-ies, nor did they form a distinct movement. Fauvism, which was a comparatively short-lived style concentrated in the years 1905 to 1907, was more the product of friendships and artistic contacts. Its artists had very different styles of painting, but they held a common concern for using bright, non-descriptive color.

The partnership between Derain and Matisse is celebrated in this pair of portraits from their campaign of 1905, portraits which also high-light the differences between the styles and aims of the two artists. In his study of Matisse Derain's brushwork shows his debt to van Gogh, whom he greatly admired. Derain wrote of van Gogh in 1902, a year after seeing the Dutch artist's exhibition: 'Van Gogh offers not so much total cohesion as a unity of spirit.' Derain's touch is reminiscent of van Gogh's parallel hatched brushstrokes, particularly in the handling of Matisse's beard.

In his color, however, Derain's allegiance is to Gauguin, whose work had again been forcefully brought to his notice that summer when he and Matisse visited Daniel de Monfried to see his collection of Gauguin's paintings. The burnt golds, sharp greens and brick reds of Gauguin's later Tahitian paintings are the basis for Derain's palette in his portrait of Mat-isse. With the exception of the cobalt blue and white of the shirt, all his colors are, mixed hues, achieved by combining two or more colors. These result in a muted harmony which is comparable to that found in Gauguin's pictures. Within the broad areas of color, Derain's hues are varied and modified, but overall, the picture appears as a series of blocks of flattish color. Although Gauguin's brush-work had more delicacy and finesse than Der-ain's vigorous touch, there are remarkable technical similarities between Derain's result here, and Gauguin's work.

It even seems that Derain was encouraging the analogy with Gauguin by his choice of a canvas with a grainy texture, albeit one much less coarse than Gauguin's typical hessian. The Fauve artist chose a coffee-colored prepara-tion, which must have been applied by Derain himself, for it is less solidly opaque than the usual commercial grounds, and it only covers the face side of the canvas indicating that it was primed after stretching. This ground, which protects the canvas while simultaneously giv-ing it the color of unprimed canvas, is also a reminder of Gauguin's use of raw canvas sur-faces. Its color unifies the colors in the paint layer, making them more subdued in tone to complement their muted Gauguinesque hues. The mixed, broken colors, the predominantly middle tones, and darkish ground of Derain's picture, are in marked contrast to the brilliant luminosity of Matisse's portrait of Derain. Derain's head also has a descriptive solidity which is lacking in Matisse's painting.

Derain's fairly smooth, flat application of solid color - orange-yellows and yellowish greens - in the background of the composition, pushes Matisse's head, which inclines toward the spectator, further forward. Its texture separates it from the figure of Matisse, all of which is handled with more open, block-like strokes of color. This gives the bust a sense of form, which is further enhanced by the use of light. The depiction of an identifiable fall of light, in colors which still approximate to natural light and shade, make the Derain less truly Fauve than the Matisse. In the Derain, the light falls from the right, giving a powerful highlit effect to the right two-thirds of the face and the neck. The contrasting, predominantly viridian green and white shadowed side of the face, is a complement to the pinkish-oranges of the lit side. Thus, in addition to producing a startling interplay of colors, there remains a powerful sense of form sculpted by a specific light and shade.

The first outlines and contours of the form were laid in dark, probably Prussian, blue. diluted with turpentine and applied fluidly with a sable hair brush. The execution is then alia prima, with wet-in-wet reworking where necessary, and Derain has left the individual marks of the brush clearly visible. Hog's hair brushes were used, with color applied thickly and. in general, opaquely. The dark viridian green and cobalt blue mixture used for the shadow side of the beard is the only area where the color is translucent. Other palette colors here include vermilion, red lake, and yellows, probably the sounder cadmiums, all in mixtures. A 2.5cm (lin) stroke of cobalt violet mixed with white is placed, as a livid contrast to the surrounding greens, to the left of the sitter's nostril. The brush sizes used are easy to identify from the individual touches of applied color. They are mainly round-ended, all flat, varying in width from 6mm ( 1/4 in) in the beard, to 1.25cm ( 1/2 in) or even 1.9cm ( 3/4 in ) width in the shirt and background.

Derain and Matisse worked together at Colliourein the summer of 1905, when this and Matisse's portrait of Derain were both painted. Matisse appears in tensely introspective in this dynamic study. His gaze is directed outwards but not focused upon the spectator. The angle of his head, pitched forward slightly and positioned high up on the canvas, emphasizes this mood. A lively fall of strong light and shade accentuates the strong forms of the head. The lights arehandledin warm orange pinks, the darks in cool greens. The painting is alia prima, boldly and rapidly executed in large, loaded brushstrokes with the coffee-colored ground showing actively among the broken colors which dominate the painting. The elongated form of Matisse's head and beard relate well to the standard format vertical landscape 8 canvas chosen by Derain.

By 1907, Derain had begun to abandon the brilliant colors of Fauvism, and, later, under the influence of Cubism, he returned to a somber tonal palette, dominated by earth colors. Derain met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) in 1904. The poet later described the Fauve period of Derain's style as 'youthful truculence', stressing the sobriety of his post-Fauve work, and his passionate study of the Old Masters.

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