Art and Poetry, Andre Derain and Wordsworth

André Derain

I came across some of this mans work while looking for paintings of rainbows. I don’t think he painted rainbows, but his work is so colourful, I thought it would be perfect. I saw the most amazing rainbow a couple of days ago, it was a double rainbow and unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me to capture it. 

 I remembered an old Poem I’ve not thought of in years, a Wordsworth poem about the rainbow. The first couple of lines go; ‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky’. That is exactly how I felt. So, here is the little poem by Wordsworth, some very colourful paintings by Andre Darain and some information about the artist.

André Derain (10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.

Born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. He met Matisse in 1898 while studying to be an engineer and taking painting classes a hobby.  It was Matisse who persuaded Derain's parents to allow him to abandon his engineering career and devote himself to painting. And the art world should be very grateful to Matisse for doing this.

Derain and Matisse worked together during the  summer of 1905 and then displayed their colourful,.  innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. These vivid, unnatural colors led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe their work as ‘les Fauves’, or "the wild beasts", marking the start of the Fauvist movement. The remark was originally meant as an insult but the term stuck and the fauvist movement was born.  

In 1906 Derain was commissioned to paint the city of London, he produced a series of cityscapes which were colourful and alive. His work was likened to Monet by some critics of the time. Some of his views of the Thames use the Pointillist technique of multiple dots, although by this time, because the dots have become much larger, it is rather more simply the separation of colours called Divisionism.
For the full write up on Derain, go here.


Information from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_Derain

William Wordsworth
 The Rainbow

 My heart leaps up when I behold  
A rainbow in the sky:  
So was it when life began;  
So is it now I am a man;  
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!  
The Child is father of the Man;  
I could wish my days to be  
Bound each to each by natural frivolity.