André Derain: The London Paintings

This is the first publication dedicated to the extraordinary series of paintings that Andre Derain produced at the height of his avant-garde notoriety, after being branded a Fauve or "wild beast" in Paris for his uncompromising use of pure color. Building on his rising fame, Derain's dealer Ambroise Vollard sent him to London in 1906 to produce works that would rival Claude Monet's recently exhibited views of the city. The result was a series of canvases that confronted the traditions of Impressionism and constructed a new artistic language to express an unprecedented vision of the city, seen not as fog-shrouded and gloomy but bathed in piercing bright sunshine and radiating colors. New research and the recent discovery of Derain's two London sketchbooks have completely revised understanding of these paintings. This book reproduces all 29 surviving canvases together for the first time.