Provence Landscape

In 1930 Derain was working in the Var, in the south of France, and painted a series of landscapes around one village perched on a hilltop. The Orangerie owns two of them, and this one is small, about 33 by 41 centimetres. The village sits far off, a pale strip of houses along the ridge, above a wide, empty plain of ochre earth. The olive trees are only brushed in with broad strokes, and a bare dark trunk cuts up through the picture. The museum describes forms and colours dissolving in the sun, as if seen through a heat haze, so that trees, walls and rocks seem made of the same sunbaked stuff. It also sees an echo of Corot, the French landscape painter of the century before. The picture belonged to Paul Guillaume and entered the national collections in 1963.