Memory block

Litho left, upstairs hall right, with reflections

I seem to have a blockage in my memory about the name of the painter of the reproduction which has hung in our upstairs hall for many years now. And before that, in the downstairs hall of my childhood home.

I knew it was on the blog somewhere, but various attempts at search failed to turn it up.

The answer was to take a picture with my telephone. OneDrive was performing this morning and within minutes the picture was on my laptop, ready for presentation to Google image search. Which came up with the answer Derain, 'The Blue Oak', Glass Plate Litho, Fine Art Print USA, 1937.

Armed with the word Derain I soon tracked down reference 1, where the painting was called 'Vue de Martigues', from 1908. About half way through what seemed to be the very long life of the painter. Which turns out to be a mistake, with his being born in the more probable 1880 than 1850.

So just about exactly four years since I last asked the question, I have done the same trick with image search and got more or less the same answer. Maybe next time, blog search will turn it up without all this bother. Maybe I have enough of the right sort of words in the foregoing to snag it.

Now worrying about the status of the blue oak, not quite the same as the painting. Who made the lithograph? Was it supposed to be a copy of the painting, or was it a new version of the same subject? It is certainly a lot smaller at 11 by 13 inches than my reproduction.

Also about the location of the original as the museum in Zurich said to have it (reference 2) deny all knowledge. In attempting to track it down I failed to find either the picture or a even a catalogue of his work, but I did turn up reference 4, a prose poem by Apollinaire for which Derain contributed a good number of woodcuts. DPLA did not turn up a full scale facsimile, but it did turn up quite a few samples, which reminded me of the work of the slightly later Eric Gill.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/09/derain.html.

Reference 2: https://www.kunsthaus.ch/. 

Reference 3:  André Derain - Vue de Martigues - 1908.

Reference 4: L'Enchanteur pourrissant - André Derain, Guillaume Apollinaire - 1909.