Derains Thames River Paintings
August 25, 2020
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Andre Derain’s London paintings are an inspiration!
In 1906 it was suggested by Derain’s dealer Ambroise Vollard to paint the Thames area. Monet had painted wonderful works studying light, movement and abstraction of the area six years before. With Derain’s interest in colour, light and line, anything could happen and did.
Visiting the Thames area on a gloomy day, it was hard to see where the inspiration came from. If the weather was dull Derain’s imagination had free rein!
In some of Derain’s Thames paintings, the water, sky and buildings have been broken up with pure primary and secondary colours, blue and greens, yellows and greens, etc.
In other paintings the sky is red next to green buildings, or a yellow sky with a purple bridge, paintings of opposite colours working in harmony.
Painting 4 and 5
Derain, Charing Cross Bridge
Derain, London Bridge
In other paintings he was able to get away with using the three primaries in the sky and buildings.
(The opposite of less is more)
Painting 5
Derain, Waterloo Bridge
I’m my work first I tried opposite colours, similar to Fauve paintings then I placed different colours next to each other, like in Derain’s paintings.
Wanting to paint reality and abstraction at the same time, the picture plain opened up.
To have the water sky land etc to remain as real as possible, the colours next to each other worked if they were a similar tone.
Shelly Beach
Point King Beach
Antibes Fishing Boats
Women Running
Noticing Derain painted a bird’s eye view of the area, in the drawing of the next paintings I imagined what the scene would be like from a different angle.
Fisherman’s Pier
Point King Beach