Portrait of Henri Matisse
André Derain, French, 1880 - 1954
In July 1905 André Derain visited Henri Matisse in Collioure, France, a small fishing village near the Spanish border, where they embarked on an extremely productive pictorial collaboration. Rendered in a rhythmic scheme of primary colors, the younger artist's portrait of his older mentor captures the excitement of that summer, when their shared quest for pure, liberated color developed into the style known today as Fauvism. With his pants rolled up above his ankles, Matisse sits on a flimsy beach chair beside a folding table containing a large red water pot that he had recently bought in the Spanish village of Llansa.