André Derain - Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York Wednesday, May 15, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Rendered in thick brushstrokes applied in dabs straight from the tube and onto the canvas, André Derain’s Les remparts à Montreuil-sur mer, 1909, reflects a fusion of the two movements which defined this key moment in the artist’s career—Fauvism and Cubism. In depicting the walls of the Northern French city of Montreuil-sur-mer, Derain uses Cubist blocks of color, rejecting the depiction of three-dimensional space. Characterized by a more mature color palette as compared to the works created at the height of Fauvism just a few years prior, the present work illustrates the evolution of Derain’s landscapes, specifically reflecting an interest in Paul Cézanne’s Post-Impressionist vistas. Belonging to the same family collection for nearly 85 years, the present work provides a fresh to market look into an important transitional time within the artist’s oeuvre.

     

    City walls of Montreuil-sur-mer, France. Image: David Bagnall / Alamy Stock Photo

    Nestled among groves of thick trees rendered in rich browns, blues and blacks, city walls and homes reminiscent of the French countryside emerge from the verdant ground. While the buildings are rendered in thick, singular blocks of color, the field below is composed of quick, spontaneous brushstrokes. Having founded Fauvism with Henri Matisse in 1905, Derain was concerned with upending French academic painting and challenging the Impressionists, who were in contrast more fixed on a dutiful representation of nature. In the early 1900s, this meant that Derain’s landscapes were painted in brilliant, oftentimes pure, colors that had no relation to reality. Created at the turn of the decade in 1909, just before Fauvism officially came to an end in 1910, the present work incorporates more earth tones than Derain’s more colorful renderings of the French countryside. As such, the present work reflects a shift from the height of the colorist movement, when Derain began opting for more subdued, while still imaginary, hues.

    “Fauvism was our ordeal by fire. No matter how far we moved away from things, in order to observe them and transpose them at our leisure, it was never far enough. Colors became charges of dynamite. They were expected to discharge light. It was a fine idea, in its freshness, that everything could be raised above the real. It was serious too. With our flat tones, we even preserved a concern for mass, giving for example to a spot of sand a heaviness it did not possess, in order to bring out the fluidity of the water, the lightness of the sky... The great merit of this method was to free the picture from all imitative and conventional contact.”
    —André Derain

    In addition to its tonality, Les remparts à Montreuil-sur-mer is unique in its incorporation of Cubist tendencies, particularly the ordering and structuring of nature according to Paul Cézanne. Derain’s thick brushstrokes and box-like houses are directly influenced by Cézanne’s fragmented landscapes. Here, Derain is embracing the abstract potential of nature, while not afraid of bending it in a way which suits his own painterly needs. Though the colors are more earthy than his earlier, more vibrant compositions, Derain feels no need to adhere to Montreuil-sur-mer's natural color palette, positioning bright orange tones next to greens to represent the grass below the city wall. As such, the present work offers a glimpse into this pivotal moment in Derain’s career when he was grappling with different ways to use color and form. By the 1920s, Derain would embrace a much darker palette to depict more Neoclassical subjects. A transition from one phase of the artist’s career to the next, Les remparts à Montreuil-sur-merrepresents a distinct moment within Derain’s practice, bridging the gap between his brilliantly colored Fauvist paintings and moodier, Cubist scenes.

     

    Paul Cézanne, Château Noir, 1900/1904, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: © National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer, 1958.10.1

     

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    • Description

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    • Provenance

      Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris
      Alphonse Bellier, Paris, December 2, 1938, lot 265 (possibly)
      Private Collection, Paris and New York (acquired at the above sale)
      Thence by descent to the present owner

    • Literature

      Michel Kellermann, André Derain: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Tome I, 1895–1914, Paris, 1992, no. 161, p. 101 (illustrated)

117

Les remparts à Montreuil-sur-mer

signed "Derain" lower right
oil on canvas
18 1/8 x 21 1/8 in. (46 x 53.7 cm)
Painted in 1909.

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Estimate
$300,000 - 500,000 

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Contact Specialist

Annie Dolan
NY Head of Auctions and Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session

New York Auction 15 May 2024