André Derain was born on June 10, 1880, in Chatou, France. In 1898–99 he attended the Académie Camillo, studied with Eugène Carrière, and met Henri Matisse. In 1900 he met and shared a studio with Maurice de Vlaminck and painted his first landscapes. In 1905 the dealer Ambroise Vollard purchased all the works from Derain’s studio. In the same year Derain exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, worked with Matisse in Collioure during July and August, painted in L’Estaque and Marseilles, exhibited alongside the other Fauve artists in the Salon d’Automne, and made his first trip to London. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler became Derain’s dealer in 1907. During that year the artist experimented with stone sculpture and moved to Montmartre, where he associated with Pablo Picasso and other artists and poets at the Bateau-Lavoir. In a movement away from his well-known Fauve style of 1905–07, Derain’s work of this period was characterized by an increasingly restrained palette and more tightly woven brushwork.

Derain spent the spring of 1909 painting in Carrières-Saint-Denis, where Georges Braque visited him frequently. The following year he and Picasso painted together in Cadaqués, Spain. In 1912 Derain developed an interest in the nude and in the following years produced many still lifes. In 1913 Derain’s work gained international exposure through his participation in the Armory Show, New York, and the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon at Der Sturm gallery, Berlin. He exhibited widely in Germany in 1914. During World War I Derain served in the military, producing a variety of works while on the front lines, including inventive masks made from shell cases. In 1916 his first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Paul Guillaume, Paris, for which Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the introduction to the catalogue. In 1919 he collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev, designing the sets and costumes for his production of La Boutique Fantasque in London. Kahnweiler purchased Derain’s artistic output from 1920 through 1922, and Paul Guillaume served as his dealer from 1923 until 1934. His work was informed by a wide variety of stylistic precursors, including Florentine painting and the frescoes of Pompeii.

During World War II Derain went to Berlin with a group of French artists to attend the exhibition of Nazi sculptor Arno Brecker. This visit, for which he was strongly criticized, reflects the culmination of Derain’s radical departure from the stylistic and conceptual concerns of the avant-garde in France. Derain died on September 8, 1954, in Garches, France.