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Artist or Maker: André Derain (1880-1954)
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Provenance: Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin.
Herwarth Walden (Galerie der Sturm), Berlin, by 1912.
Mr Knops, Krefeld, by whom acquired circa 1912.
Private collection, and thence by descent.
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Exhibited: Berlin, Galerie der Sturm, circa 1912.
Zurich, Galerie Art Focus, Der Sturm: Herwarth Waldens 'Sturm' in Berlin, May - October 2002, no. 20 (illustrated p. 55).
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Notes: VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
This painting is sold with a photo-certificate from Michel Kellermann dated Paris le 6 avril 2000.
Painted circa 1905, Bateaux à Collioure appears to date from André Derain's historic stay in the village of the title. Derain's paintings from Collioure marked a significant turning point in his own artistic development, and also in the history of the entire movement now termed Fauvism. For it was during his time there with fellow artist Henri Matisse that Derain truly gained the confidence that would enliven his bold palette, that would fuel the energy that so visibly leaps from the canvas in this painting as it did in those that he exhibited in the Salon d'Automne later that year, and that ultimately led to Louis Vauxcelles referring to him and his fellow artists as 'wild beasts'-- as fauves.
Already Derain had been pursuing a path that would lead to outright Fauvism for several years, not least in Chatou. There, he and his fellow artist Maurice de Vlaminck figuratively set their canvases alight with paintings filled with incandescent colour. Matisse himself was amazed to find these two young artists independently exploring a path much like his own, and became an important advocate of their paintings, even encouraging the veteran dealer Ambroise Vollard to buy their works: he purchased the entire studio contents of both painters. Crucially, Matisse, himself facing a mild dilemma in his painting at this period, also benefited from their association, as he found in their youth and verve the encouragement to explore an ever-bolder palette.
Matisse had been an important mentor to Derain for several years by the time Bateaux à Collioure was painted, and had even interceded on the young painter's behalf with his parents, insisting that art was a vocation. In this way, he had secured Derain an allowance from his father. During the summer of 1905, Matisse sent a postcard to Derain from Collioure, a holiday destination he had been recommended by Paul Signac:
'I cannot insist too much in order to persuade you that a stay here is absolutely necessary for your work-- you would be in the most advantageous condition and you would retrieve pecuniary benefits from the work that you do here. I am certain that if you listen to me you will find that this is why I repeat, come' (Matisse, quoted in André Derain: Le peintre du 'trouble moderne', exh.cat., Paris, 1994, p. 112).
Derain did not delay long in heading South. There, he found a small community gathered around Matisse that included other artists such as Maillol. Matisse and Derain painted together, often showing the same views and capturing the same motifs, each artist seemingly benefiting from the presence of the other. Indeed, the harbour at Collioure, with the intense blue of the Mediterranean and the intense summer sun, was a second cradle for Fauvism, just as the banks of the Seine at Chatou had been up until this point. In Bateaux à Collioure, the lapis-like blue of the sea is filled with life, with vitality. It burns on the canvas with an intensity that is wholly Mediterranean, and provides a rich backdrop to the hustle and bustle of the boats and the people on the shore. The shore itself has been painted with a deeply cunning restraint, Derain allowing the primed canvas to act as a witty substitute for the ground, a technique which also emphasises the various colours of the paint. Derain's enthusiasm for the views at Collioure is as evident in the darting energy and almost electric colours of this painting as it is in his rapturous words in a letter to Vlaminck from this period:
'In effect, this country, these are its people, their bronzed heads with saucy, orange- and chrome-coloured skin; their bluish-black beards. These are its women, who make beautiful gestures, with their black loose-fitting jackets, their mantles; then their red, green, or grey pottery, of donkeys, boats, white sails, multicoloured sailboats' (Derain, quoted in J. Freeman, Fauves, exh.cat., Sydney, 1995, p. 72).
These colours, made so much more vivid in Collioure by the Mediterranean summer sun, leapt into life and then into Derain's canvas.
Despite the wildness that Vauxcelles would subsequently attribute to the Fauve artists, Derain was not painting purely in terms of instinct when he was in Collioure. Instead, he was enjoying revelation after revelation, both through his own explorations and through those of his companion painter Matisse. These coalesced into increasingly concrete ideas on form, colour, shadow and so forth:
'First, a new conception of light which consists in this: the negation of shadow. Here the light[ed surfaces] are very strong, the shadows very light. Shadow is a whole world of light and a luminosity which opposes itself to the light of the sun: what one calls reflections. We've both neglected this so far, and in the future it might add expression to the composition. Second, around Matisse [I] know how to get rid of everything that the division of tone entails. He goes on, but I've come around from it completely and almost never make use of it any more. It's logical in a luminous and harmonious panel, but it ruins those things which get their expression from intentional disharmonies' (Derain, quoted in J. Lee, Derain, Oxford & New York, 1990, p. 21).
This excerpt reveals the fact that Derain, a mature artist in his own right, was not overly swayed by Matisse, but instead drew his own lines and limitations, meaning that his work is marked out by differences from his friend's, as is evident in a comparison between Bateaux à Collioure and a Matisse painting from the same period, for instance La plage rouge.
It was with a selection of sister-paintings to Bateaux à Collioure that Derain contributed to the infamous Salon d'Automne, itself a forum co-founded by Matisse. He had already shown paintings in another Salon earlier in the year, but it was now that his pictures, surrounded by those of other followers of the same aesthetic such as Matisse and Vlaminck, gained great attention. This resulted in condemnation at the hands of critics such as Vauxcelles; and yet it also prompted epiphanies for so many of the artists exhibiting in the nearby rooms, meaning that within a year there was a vast cohort of 'Wild Beasts' at large on the artistic scene in Paris.
It is a tribute to the expressionistic power of Bateaux à Collioure that it is distinguished by historic early provenance, having passed through the hands of both Albert Flechtheim and Herwarth Walden, in whose celebrated avant-garde Der Sturm gallery this picture was even exhibited as early as 1912, hinting at the importance to German Expressionism of their Fauve predecessors.
