Paris

André Derain

Mountains at Collioure

1905

Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 100.3 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington

Foothills rise in bands of orange, blue and yellow above a thicket of trees. Almost nothing in the scene keeps its everyday color.

• NGA lecturer David Gariff sees van Gogh's restless, moving trees echoed in these twisting forms.
• Look at the trunks: bright red lines twist through foliage of blue and green.
• Short, separate dashes build the foliage and grass, and dark blue lines outline the hills.
• Each hill is one flat band of intense color, and the trees lose any solid, rounded form. The place reads as a pattern of color more than a record of a site.
• The dealer Ambroise Vollard possibly bought it from the artist; it came to the gallery in 1982 from John Hay Whitney's collection.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art