André Derain

Galerie Kahnweiler (stock no. 1064), Paris
Wallraf-Richartz Museum (inventory no. 1196), Cologne, acquired from the above on April 14, 1913
Removed as "degenerate art" by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, from the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, 1937 and placed in storage in Schloss Schönhausen (as Südliche Landschaft, reference no. EK 15749)
Karl Buchholz, Berlin, acquired frown the above on February 7, 1939
Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), New York
Acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, April 13, 1939 (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund)

Berlin, Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, André Derain, 1929, no. 14 (titled Die Ansicht von Vers)
Bern, Kunsthalle, André Derain, 1935, no. 14
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Art in Our Time: 10th Anniversary Exhibition: Painting, Sculpture, Prints, 1939
Detroit, Detroit Institute of Art, Refugee Art, 1941
Williamstown, Lawrence Art Museum, Williams College, Paintings Expelled from German Museums, 1941
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Derain Retrospective, 1944
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1944 (on view)
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum Collection of Painting and Sculpture, 1945-46
Palm Beach, Society of the Four Arts, The School of Paris, 1948
Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1949 (on loan)
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, XXVth Anniversary Exhibition: Paintings, 1954-55
Palm Beach, Society of the Four Arts, School of Paris, 1960
New York, The Museum of Modern Art & traveling, André Derain, 1961-63
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, André Derain in the Museum Collection, 1962-63
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1964-66 (on view)
Sleepy Hollow, Kykuit: Home of Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, 1970-71 (on loan)
New York, Gracie Mansion, 1979-84 (on loan)
Paris, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, André Derain, 1994-95
Paris, Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées & Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Paris Barcelona 1888-1937, 2001-02 
Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti & Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, André Derain, 2006-07

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Derain, Leipzig, 1920, illustrated pl. 18
André Salmon, André Derain, Paris, 1923, illustrated pl. 29
Jaroslav B. Svrcek, André Derain, Prague, 1938, no. 5, illustrated n.p.
Malcolm Vaughan, Derain, New York, 1941, illustrated p. 35
Georges Hilaire, Derain, Geneva, 1959, illustrated pl. 104
Franz Roh, "Entartete" Kunst. Kunstbarbarei im Dritten Reich, Hanover, 1962, p. 209
Nina Nikolaevna Kalitina, André Derain, Leningrad, 1976, illustrated p. 133
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Painting and Sculpture in The Museum of Modern Art 1929-1967, New York, 1977, illustrated pl. 61
André Derain in North American Collections (exhibition catalogue), Norman
Mackenzie Art Gallery at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina & University Art
Museum, University of California, Berkeley, 1982, illustrated n.p.
Alicia Legg, ed., Painting and Sculpture in The Museum of Modern Art: Catalog of the Collection with Selected Works on Paper to January 1988, New York, 1988, p. 31
Michel Kellerman, André Derain, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. I, Paris,
1992, no. 207, illustrated p. 126 & in color p. 127
Michel Charzat, Le Titan foudroyé, Paris, 2015, illustrated in color pl. LXI

Canvas is wax lined. There are some isolated areas of craquelure in the darkest green pigments mostly at lower left. There are also a few pindot losses at lower left. The surface is clean. Under UV light, areas of primed canvas left unpainted in the sky fluoresce but no inpainting is apparent. Work is in good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Derain’s seminal Fauve period ended abruptly, and by 1910 he had destroyed much of his unsold Fauve output and began to paint more sober landscapes and still lifes, finding inspiration both in Cubism and in the art of Cézanne (see fig. 1). Commenting on the legacy of his earlier work, Derain stated: “Fauvism was our ordeal by fire. No matter how far we moved away from things, in order to observe them and transpose them at our leisure, it was never far enough. Colors became charges of dynamite. They were expected to discharge light. It was a fine idea, in its freshness, that everything could be raised above the real. It was serious too. With our flat tones, we even preserved a concern for mass, giving for example to a spot of sand a heaviness it did not possess, in order to bring out the fluidity of the water, the lightness of the sky… The great merit of this method was to free the picture from all imitative and conventional contact” (quoted in Denys Sutton, André Derain, London, 1959, pp. 20-21).  In this new period of intense study of landscapes and still lifes, Derain immersed himself in painterly tradition. Nicknamed the “pilgrim of museums,” Derain experimented in a spare yet lyrical style that paid homage to the Italian so-called primitives, traditional French landscape painters and Flemish Renaissance masters, all the while building on the artistic tenets and modernist aesthetic of Cézanne. His output from this period was increasingly more muted in palette, striking a conscious balance between Fauve vibrancy and a more modest reference to naturalism, albeit stylized in a way that was to become uniquely Derain’s own from this period onward.

In the summer of 1912 at Vers, in the region of the Lot, Derain rented a house with a view of a church. He spent his time painting vanitas-inspired still lifes and views of the nearby valley flanked by steep gorges. His landscapes of this time recall the work of Piero della Francesca in their austerity and consciously naïve realization (see fig. 2). In La Vallée du Lot, the last and most grand of his Lot series, the sparkling village is heightened by the ochre and green pigments of the surrounding hills, their outlines seemingly fantastical and perhaps even biomorphic, recalling the female figures embedded in landscapes that Degas rendered in pastel in the 1890s (see fig. 3).

The Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne purchased La Vallée du Lot just one year after it was painted, a fact that underscores its quality not to mention the impressive international reputation that Derain had already established for himself as a young French painter. Further underscoring the radical nature of this picture, it was later one of the works to be removed from the museum collection under the order of the Third Reich's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, having been deemed too modern and in direct opposition to the Nazi ideology, thus "degenerate." Banned from exhibition in Germany and quickly exported, this work was two years later sold by storied dealer Curt Valentin of Buchholz Gallery to The Museum of Modern Art in New York, then under the leadership of founding director and visionary art historian Alfred Barr.