Woman in a Chemise

This painting, Woman in a Chemise is a key work from Derain’s Fauvist period and is a confident example of the power of expression that can be achieved through shape and colour. The picture plane is stretched from top to bottom by a seated, fiery-haired woman, her gaze directed straight at us. Despite a seemingly rapid and expressive mode of painting, the image is carefully constructed from a stringent system of triangles, with colours restricted to the complementary contrasts red/green and orange/blue. Together with Matisse, Derain spent the summer of 1905 in the town of Collioure in the south of France, where they experimented in setting colour free from its purely descriptive function. The results of their sojourn were shown at the 1905 Salon d’Automne. Afterwards, Derain continued the Fauvist style, but by 1908 had changed his idiom.