Derain - Still Life with Fruit

This still life dates from the 1920s, a period in which Derain was experimenting with different ways of rendering form and light. He felt that emphasizing both line and color at once only scattered the viewer's attention, so he used black outlines when he wanted to define an object's edge, and relied on color contrast alone when he wanted to convey its form.

Look at the grapes: one side is painted darker, the other lighter, giving them a sense of volume through color alone, without a single outline. The rim of the fruit basket and the folds of the tablecloth, by contrast, are rendered with line. The painting shows Derain consciously choosing between line and color depending on what each part of the scene called for.