Biographie

1880–1954

Born into a wealthy fam­i­ly in the afflu­ent Parisian sub­urb of Cha­tou, Derain was des­tined for an engi­neer­ing career and to that effect entered the Académie Camil­lo in 1898. Nonethe­less Derain’s innate tal­ent for art direct­ed him to attend the paint­ing class­es of Eugene Car­rière and study the wealth of mas­ter­pieces at the Lou­vre muse­um in an auto­di­dact way. By then Derain had befriend­ed Hen­ri Matisse, a fel­low pupil in the stu­dio of Eugène Car­rière. In 1900 Derain met the young Mau­rice de Vlam­inck by haz­ard on a train trip. The two became close friends and shared a stu­dio in Chatou.

Derain under­went the deci­sive influ­ence of Vin­cent Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne whose work he respec­tive­ly dis­cov­ered in 1901 and 1903. Fol­low­ing his release from mil­i­tary ser­vice in 1904, Matisse plead­ed with Derain’s par­ents to allow their son to pur­sue a career as a painter.

In 1905, Derain joined his friend Matisse in Col­lioure, where he pro­duced his first Fauve works. Con­sid­ered with Matisse as the founders of Fau­vism, Derain exhib­it­ed at the infa­mous Room VII of the ‘Salon d’Automne’ of 1905, oth­er­wise known as the ‘Cage of Wild Beasts’; Derain sub­se­quent­ly signed a con­tract with art deal­er Ambroise Vol­lard, who sent him to Lon­don to paint a series of city-views. In 1906, Derain joined Georges Braque in l’Estaque near Mar­seille, and spent the sum­mer of the 1907 in Cas­sis where Matisse vis­it­ed him. In 1907 Daniel-Hen­ry Kah­n­weil­er pur­chased Derain’s entire Fauve production.
In 1908 dur­ing a sojourn in Mar­tigues with Oth­on Friesz, George Braque and Raoul Dufy, Derain paint­ed a series of land­scapes in a pro­to-Cubist fash­ion. With his series ‘Maisons au bord de l’eau’ exe­cut­ed dur­ing 1908–1910, Derain joined Braque and Picas­so in their so-called ‘cézan­no-cubist’ experiment.
Dur­ing 1911–1912 Derain was an adept of Cubism. As a par­tic­i­pant in exhi­bi­tions in Moscow and New York, and in shows of the Ger­man Expres­sion­ists in Berlin, Munich, Dus­sel­dorf and Dres­den, Derain became a major fig­ure of the French artis­tic avant-garde.

At the start of the Great War in 1914, Derain was called up whilst paint­ing in the com­pa­ny of Braque and Picas­so in Mont­favet near Avi­gnon. The real­i­ty of being deployed in the artillery for the dura­tion of the war, must have led Derain to dis­tance him­self from the avant-garde and to opt for a neo-clas­si­cal fig­u­ra­tive style, insti­gat­ed by his friend Picas­so. Neo-Clas­si­cism dom­i­nat­ed the Parisian art world until 1930 and Derain’s works were exhib­it­ed around the world. As a cel­e­brat­ed fig­ure of the roar­ing 1920s Derain crossed dis­ci­plines and was active as a stage design­er and as an illustrator.
In 1935, Derain acquired an impos­ing prop­er­ty in Cham­bour­cy, sit­u­at­ed West of Paris, which became a vis­it­ing des­tiny for many artists.

Fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War, Derain retreat­ed to Cham­bour­cy, from where he worked on mul­ti­ple the­atre designs and illus­tra­tions. Hit by a mov­ing vehi­cle, Derain died in Garch­es in 1954.