- FauvismOur PickBy Sarah Whitfield
- Fauve Painting: The Making of Cultural PoliticsBy James D. Herbert
- The FauvesOur PickBy Nathalia Brodskaia
- The Fauves: The Reign of ColourBy Jean-Louis Ferrier
- The "Wild Beasts": Fauvism and Its AffinitiesBy John Elderfield
- The Fauve LandscapeBy Judi Freeman, James Herbert, John Klein, Alvin Martin, and Roger Benjamin
Important Art and Artists of Fauvism
Luxe, Calme et Volupte (1904)
This early work by Matisse clearly indicates the artist's stylistic influences, most notably Georges Seurat's Pointillism and Paul Signac's Divisionism, in the use of tiny dabs of color to create a visual frisson. What sets this work apart from these more rigid methods, however, is Matisse's intense concentrations of pure color. The oranges, yellows, greens, and other colors all maintain their own discrete places on the picture plane, never quite merging to form the harmonious tonality that both Seurat and Signac were known for, and instead heighten the almost vertiginous effect created by the striking dots of paint. Matisse took this work's title, which translates as "luxury, peace, and pleasure," from Charles Baudelaire's poem L'Invitation au Voyage (Invitation to a Voyage).
The River Seine at Chatou (1906)
This scene depicts the portion of the Seine that runs through Chatou, the Paris suburb where de Vlaminck and Derain shared a studio beginning in 1901. For The River Seine, de Vlaminck used impasto (a technique practiced by many Fauves): thick daubs of paint applied directly from the tube, then brushed together in short strokes to create the effect of movement. For the water and sky, de Vlaminck used a range of blues and greens, as well as dazzling white highlights applied in choppy dabs; the two red-and-orange trees at the left provide a lively contrast. The finished effect is one of brightness and vibrating motion; detail and traditional perspective matter far less than a sense of buoyant pleasure. As de Vlaminck said, "I try to paint with my heart and my guts without worrying about style."
Pinède à Cassis (Landscape) (1907)
Derain famously claimed to use "color as a means of expressing my emotion and not as a transcription of nature." In this painting (just as in his famous Mountains at Collioure (1905)) Derain used long, isolated brushstrokes, influenced by Divisionist painting, to structure the trees and ground of his landscape. The colors are indeed non-representational, even unnatural: the trees' trunks are almost green, and the landscape is abstracted in patches of bright yellow and orange. The pulsing brushwork and jarring contrasts of these colors suggest the shimmering heat of a Mediterranean summer. By rejecting chiaroscuro and spatial depth, Derain keeps the viewer's attention fixed on this effect of light and on the life force that seems to ripple through every element of the landscape.