Georges Seurat & Andre Derain
The French artist George Seurat was born on the 2nd o December 1859 and died 29th of March 1891, This was 59 years after Andre Derain (also a French artist) was born on the 10th of June 1880 and died in September 1954. They both are well known artist of their time, the difference is Seurat is a post-impressionist artist and Andrea Derain was an artist of the Fauvism time period. Seurat was born into a wealthy family and attended the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879. After a year of service at Brest Military Academy, he returned to Paris in 1880. For the next two years, he worked at mastering the art of black-and-white drawing. He is well known for this and or the innovation of the painting technique called pointillism. When Seurat was using this technique he would apply the primary colours in small dots side by side which the human eye ascertains this information as one large colour blending the primary colours that are next to each other and making the viewer see it as many secondary colours all over the piece of art.
Andre Derain was of a different movement in art which was called the fauvism period. Fauvism is define as an early-20th-century movement in painting which begun by a group of French artists and marked by the use of bold, often distorted forms and vivid colours. He was an artist of painting and sculpting. He also was a co-founder of Fauvism along side with Henri Matisse another artist of the time. He came to the idea for fauvism while studying to be an engineer at the Académie Camillo, he attended painting classes under Eugène Carrière, and there met Matisse. Influenced by the work of Cézanne as well as the early Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque’s, Derain’s style changed and by 1912.The then together formed this idea of bright and distorted shaped and colours. Andrea Derain then was interrupted from study for 4 year when he was conscripted into the French army. Once he was let off from duty Matisse persuaded Derain's parents to allow him to leave his engineering career and devote his life to painting; subsequently Derain attended the Académie Julian.
Andre Derain’s most known and famous paintings are the Charing Cross Bridge and Big Ben they both were created in 1906 as oil on canvas pieces, the paintings became more traditional and structured. But before then Picasso bought out his whole collection including the two painting in the same year -1906. His painting were seen as an emotional personal journey. “Painting is too beautiful to be reduced to images which may be compared with those of a dog or horse. It is imperative that we escape the circle in which the realists have trapped us.” Is what Derain once said This is one of the most justified remarks i believe that leads us to why he paint how he did at the time. The paintings, unlike George Seurat’s use primary and secondary colours. The pieces consist of bright and vibrant colours which are trademark for this period and create a strong a bold feel to both works pain that Derain painted. The ‘Big Ben’ which was made a painting that captured London’s canal's splendour with Big Ben, the clock tower, in the background and the ‘Charing Cross Bridge’ that depicts a scene from the shores of the river Thames, Derain painted this while standing on a wharf near the Lion’s Brewery, which is the blue building on the far left. They are motivating landscapes works in which Andre Derain transformed into bold and unrealistic coloured masterpieces. The brush work in itself of both are very much defined by using very bright and contrasted colour over the background colours and it is obvious to the viewer which creates this feeling of intendancy for the picture to look like it’s a quick snapshoot of life were as George Seurat’s seem more stylised and no movement. It also uses different techniques of brush strokes and then small dashes or lines to create a look of shine on water or just simple change in