Painting Detail
Path in a Park with a FigureArtist: Andre Derain
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 12.5x12.5 cm
Date: Between 1910 and 1914
Genre: Landscape
Source: Formerly in the collection of Otto Krebs, Holzdorf
The theme of a landscape with a path and a figure appears in the years of André Derain's Fauvism. Soon after this, under the influence of the Cubism of Pablo Picasso, Derain renounced brilliant colours in favour of earthen, almost monochromatic tones. Pictures made somewhat later, around 1911-13, reflect a new movement toward simplification, even naïveté. His tiny Path in a Park with a Figure can easily be mistaken for a study from nature. However, Derain made such pictures not in the open air but in the studio - the drawn border added by the artist serves as a reminder of this.