Derain, André (1880-1954)
Port en Provence, Martigues (Martigues, Harbor in Provence)
1913
Oil on canvas, 141 x 90 cm
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
Martigues is a port on the Mediterranean coast of south-eastern France, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. It was founded in 1232 on the site of an ancient Roman camp. The mild local climate and picturesque surroundings made the town a place of pilgrimage for artists and film-makers in the 20th century. Given the large amount of cold shades – blue, green, brown and white, the landscape appears astonishingly warm. It seems flooded with the bright southern sun. This picture-postcard colourfulness is deceptive. What we have here is not merely a Mediterranean motif, but a serious piece of research that the artist carried out while studying the painting of the Old Masters. André Derain’s geometrizing style of work is only superficially reminiscent of Cubism. It is to a greater extent attentive accentuation of what is most essential in the real-life location. The landscape is disassembled into foreground, middle grounds and background, and paradoxically what has ended up closest to the viewer is clumps of grass and other plants like those that can be seen in the works of mediaeval artists. Derain studied their art extensively in the Louvre and his own creative method tended towards a synthetic reworking of amazing inventive finds in classic pictures. The charm of the age-old town with the smooth surfaces of its walls and towers surrounded by trees, each of which seems to live in its own perspective landscape, the view looking slightly down from above – all of these are features that demonstrate that modern interpretations always “stand on the shoulders” of the art of the past. (SHM)