The Bagpiper

André Derain

1910–11

Oil on canvas

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A figure in a hat plays a bagpipe in a landscape with a large tree and a body of water in the distance. A figure in a hat plays a bagpipe in a landscape with a large tree and a body of water in the distance. Although Derain had helped found Fauvism and had been an early adherent of Cubism, he increasingly fell away from both aesthetics, feeling their obsession with technique had supplanted the content of their work. Derain, instead, began to turn toward the Old Masters, even as he kept pace with the spirit of his own time. Thus, while The Bagpiper at Camiers owes much to Cézanne in color, brushwork and composition, a great debt to the Old Masters is also evident, especially the arcadian scenes peopled with shepherds and musicians by T