THE COLLECTION
Charing Cross Bridge
André Derain (French, 1880-1954)
London 1905-06. Oil on canvas, 32 1/8 x 39 5/8" (81.7 x 100.7 cm). Fractional gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
302.1992
Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection
July 17–August 31, 2009
In this cityscape Derain rendered the customary gray of the London sky with dramatic color. In the summer of 1905 he developed this bright Fauvist palette while painting alongside his elder peer Henri Matisse in Collioure, France. There the two artists produced their most radical canvases to date—paintings purged of shadows and filled with the imaginative, unbridled colors also seen here. When several of these works were exhibited in Paris that fall, the public and critics found the palette startling and ridiculed their efforts. As Derain later recalled, “Fauvism was our ordeal by fire.... It was the era of photography. This may have influenced us, and played a part in our reaction against anything resembling a snapshot of life. No matter how far we moved away from things ... it was never far enough. Colors became charges of dynamite.”
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