The Mandolin Player

In 1865 Édouard Manet travelled to Madrid and came home struck by a Velázquez portrait of a court entertainer, one figure standing in empty space with nothing around him except his own shadow. The following year he painted The Fifer, a boy musician set against a plain, flat ground. That canvas entered the national collections in 1911, and in 1930 Derain answered it with this one. The museum calls the mandolin player an imaginary figure, painted in dialogue with Manet and with Spanish painting. He is set against a bare ochre background, worked with brushstrokes running in different directions. The light on his shirt is laid on in thick impasto, its shadows in vigorous black strokes. On the neck of the mandolin the contrast flips, pale strings over dark wood. Small white touches catch the light on his eyes, nose and lips.