André Derain

Sketch for ‘The Old Bridge at Cagnes’

1910

© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018

License this image

Not on display

Artist: André Derain 1880–1954
Medium: Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 197 x 222 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1957
Reference: T00127

Display caption

This drawing dates from a period in which Derain had moved away from the rich colouring of Fauvism. The angled modulation of the planes of the bridge and surrounding buildings, and the way in which this is worked across the whole surface of the drawing. reflect his new engagement with the example of Cézanne, whose work was very much in the public eye following his death in 1906. His work of this period encouraged some to see Derain, briefly, as a leading Cubist rather than recognising his interest in Cézanne.

Gallery label, March 2008

Catalogue entry

André Derain 1880-1954

T00127 Sketch for 'The Old Bridge at Cagnes' 1910

Inscribed 'ad' b.r.
Pencil and watercolour on paper (irregular), 7 3/4 x 8 3/4 (19.5 x 22); the painted area is enclosed in a roughly drawn rectangle approximately 6 5/8 x 7 5/8 (16.8 x 19.5)
Bequeathed by Miss Grace English 1957
Prov: With G. and L. Bollag, Zurich (purchased from the artist); with Leicester Galleries, London; Miss Grace English, London, 1923
Exh: Modern French Drawings, Leicester Galleries, London, July-August 1923 (54) as 'Landscape'; Derain, RA, London, September-November 1967 (127, repr.)
Lit: V. Kalitina and others, André Derain (Leningrad 1976), p.128 repr.

A sketch, made probably from nature, for the oil painting formerly in the Chester Dale collection and now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The painting has a small figure of a woman carrying a basket on her head on the right, and is more simplified and solidly modelled: it is one of the best-known works of Derain's Cézannesque phase.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.168-9, reproduced p.168