The Road

In 1932 Derain spent time in Provence, among the low limestone hills of the Alpilles, and painted the village of Eygalières rising above the road that runs from it to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Saint-Rémy is the town where Van Gogh had spent a year in the asylum, more than 40 years before. Here plane trees frame the view, and sunlight strikes the village from the right. The museum describes the way in as a narrow country lane, winding between fields laid in as blocks of light and shadow. Warm colours for trees, earth and stone stand against a sky of intense blue. Derain held that the drama of the countryside lies in the way the sky and the earth come together. In this picture they meet along the pale line of houses on the ridge.