Fauvism:

The Story of Wild Beasts and

Colorful Paintings

Sultana Doula
Faculty of Fine Arts
2016
 -March, 2016-

An Informative Paper by –
Sultana Doula
MFA, Faculty of Fine Arts, UODA

____________________________

Submitted to –
Shajahan Ahmed Bikash
Chairperson, Faculty of Fine Arts,
UODA

______________________________

Faculty of Fine Arts

University of Development Alternative

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CONTENTS
LOOK @ Page

INTRODUCTION 3

CHAPTER I

Beginning of Fauvism 6

Spirit of Fauvism Art 9

CHAPTER II

Famous Painters & their works of Fauve Style >>> 11-21

NOTABLE

 Raoul Dufy
 Maurice de Vlaminck
 Matisse
 Albert Marquet
 Georges Braque
 Franz Marc
 Andre Derain

CHAPTER III

Legacy of Fauvism 22

Aftermath 23

BIBLIOGRAPHY 24

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 INTRODUCTION
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"),

Fauvism, the first twentieth-century movement in modern art, was initially

inspired by the examples of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul
Cézanne. The Fauves ("wild beasts") were a loosely allied group of French
painters with shared interests. Several of them, including Henri Matisse, Albert
Marquet, and Georges Rouault, had been pupils of the Symbolist artist Gustave
Moreau and admired the older artist's emphasis on personal expression. Matisse
emerged as the leader of the group, whose members shared the use of intense
color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure color
and form as means of communicating the artist's emotional state. In these
regards, Fauvism proved to be an important precursor to Cubism and Expressionism
as well as a touchstone for future modes of abstraction.
Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement
as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders
of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.
In modern art, the term Fauvism refers to a highly fashionable, if short-lived, art
movement associated with the Ecole de Paris, which formed around friendships
between French artists around the turn of the century.
In 1888 Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier:

“ How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather
blue, paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion. ”

Fauvism can also be seen as a mode of Expressionism.

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Fauvism was the first of the avant-garde movements that flourished in France in
the early years of the twentieth century. Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) and
André Derain (French, 1880–1954) introduced un-naturalistic color and vivid
brushstrokes into their paintings in the summer of 1905, working together in the
small fishing port of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast. When their pictures
were exhibited later that year at the Salon d’Automne in Paris (Matisse, The Woman
with a Hat), they inspired the witty critic Louis Vauxcelles to call them fauves in his
review for the magazine Gil Blas. This term was later applied to the artists
themselves.

Henri Matisse - A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the

Late Afternoon, 1902

H. Matisse - Woman with a Hat (Femme au

ii Chapeau) 1905

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 i
Henri Matisse - A Glimpse of Notre-Dame
in the Late Afternoon

1902

The dark colors and somber mood in this painting exhibit what had been come
to be known as Matisse’s dark period, a time when he was going through personal
difficulties. One personal difficulty was that Matisse was not able to find many
buyers for his works, which made it hard to provide for his family. His wife had
to open a dress shop in order to help provide for the family. These hardships were
compounded when Matisse and his wife, Amelie, were found to be scapegoats for
a conspiracy involving Amelie’s mother, a housekeeper for the Humbert family.
Amelie was forced to close her shop, and Matisse was left to provide for his entire
family again. This can partially explain Matisse’s shift during this time to more
saleable canvases.

ii

H. Matisse - Woman with a Hat (Femme au

Chapeau)

1905

Matisse attacked conventional portraiture with this image of his wife. Amelie's
pose and dress are typical for the day, but Matisse roughly applied brilliant color
across her face, hat, dress, and even the background. This shocked his
contemporaries when he sent the picture to the 1905 Salon d'Automne. Leo Stein
called it, "the nastiest smear of paint I had ever seen," yet he and Gertrude bought
it for the importance they knew it would have to modern painting.

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CHAPTER I

Beginning of Fauvism
Fauve painters were the first to break with Impressionism as well as with older,
traditional methods of perception. Their spontaneous, often subjective response
to nature was expressed in bold, undisguised brushstrokes and high-keyed,
vibrant colors directly from the tube.
The Fauves were a loosely shaped group of artists sharing a similar approach to
nature, but they had no definitive program. Their leader was Matisse, who had
arrived at the Fauve style after earlier experimenting with the various Post-
Impressionist styles of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne, and the Neo-Impressionism of
Seurat, Cross, and Signac. These influences inspired him to reject traditional three-
dimensional space and seek instead a new picture space defined by the
movement of color planes.

Armand Guillaumin
- Echo Rock, 1905

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Fauvist movement was the exuberant stepchild of pointillism and impressionism. The
movement was led by Henri Matisse. The Fauves emphasized vivid colors, hearty
brushstrokes and simplified forms. Raoul Dufy declared, "I don't follow any system. All
the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation
arrives." The subject matter of the Fauve painters is often impulsive and
innovative. They generally favored seascapes, the French countryside, portraits,
nudes, and domestic interiors. The Fauve palette is what set them apart. They
used paint directly from the tube and never mixed their colors. Fauvist painters
loved deep reds, oranges, and bright greens. Their unusual palette seemed
intense, garish, and even offensive to some.
André Derain observed,

"We were always intoxicated with color, with words that speak of color, and with the sun that
makes colors live."

This new style of paintings was a reflection of the transformation that was taking
place in Europe, the change from the restrictive Victorian age to a more
enlightened, tolerant society. Matisse stated "Expression, for me, does not reside in
passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement
of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the
proportions, everything has its share."

André Derain -
Charing Cross
Bridge, London,
(1906)

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When the Fauvists held their first exhibit, the daring forms and vivid colors
outraged the Paris art world. Critics stormed out and threw glasses of wine at
some of the paintings. One critic, Marcel Dupree, was so aghast at the Fauvist
paintings he vomited outside the gallery and took to his bed for several weeks.
The Fauvist movement reflects a number of influences including: Japanese
woodblock prints, and French artists, Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin.

Armand Guillaumin
- À la campagne, (1895)

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 Spirit of Fauvism Art
One of Fauvism's major contributions to modern art was its radical goal of
separating color from its descriptive, representational purpose and allowing it to
exist on the canvas as an independent element. Color could project a mood and
establish a structure within the work of art without having to be true to the
natural world.
Another of Fauvism's central artistic concerns was the overall balance of the
composition. The Fauves' simplified forms and saturated colors drew attention
to the inherent flatness of the canvas or paper; within that pictorial space, each
element played a specific role. The immediate visual impression of the work is to
be strong and unified.
Above all, Fauvism valued individual expression. The artist's direct experience of
his subjects, his emotional response to nature, and his intuition were all more
important than academic theory or elevated subject matter. All elements of
painting were employed in service of this goal.

Besides Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin,
Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Karl Pärsimägi, Jean
Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, Jean
Metzinger, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen and Georges Braque (subsequently
Picasso's partner in Cubism).

Matisse and his friends were not working in a vacuum. First and foremost, they
owed a considerable debt to Monet's Impressionism, whose non-naturalist color
schemes had caused such a scandal in the mid-1870s. Without the path finding
work of Impressionist painters, it is doubtful that Fauvism could have happened
in the way it did. The work of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) - still largely unknown to
the public - was another important influence, especially for the flat areas of pure
colour associated with the style of Synthetism, which he had developed at the Pont-
Aven school during the late 1880s, and which he had developed further during the
1890s in his art of the South Seas. Gauguin's seminal retrospective at the

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1906 Salon d'Automne was hugely influential on the development of Fauvist-style
expressionism. Fauvists also borrowed from Gauguin's primitivism, as well as
from both African sculpture and Oceanic art: Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck were
among the first painters to collect African statuettes and masks.

Henri Matisse - Portrait of Madame Matisse (Green Stripe)

(1905)

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CHAPTER II

Famous Painters & their Works of

Fauve Style

The Most Fashionable Style of Painting

At its famous launch in the Salon d'Automne of 1905, the new style caused shock and incredulity
among the art critics and public, but collectors and dealers were much more enthusiastic, and
Fauvist paintings rapidly became the most fashionable and desirable works on the market. In
addition to French dealers like Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) and Berthe Weill, the new style
attracted large foreign buyers including the Russians Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) and Sergei
Shchukin (1854-1936): one reason why there are so many Fauvist works in the Hermitage Gallery
in Russia.
By 1906, Fauvism was seen as the ultimate refinement in French painting, and another reminder
that Paris remained the undisputed centre of world art. Derain produced a set of London
landscapes - featuring the bridges and docks of the River Thames - after similar works by Claude
Monet. Except that, while Monet's London paintings had been all about light and atmosphere,
Derain's were an unrestrained celebration of colour. Other Fauves, like Kees van Dongen and
Albert Marquet began producing some of their best work, while Vlaminck painted his greatest
landscapes.

But by the end of the year, the real novelty and excitement of the movement was over, even
though the Fauvist style influenced a number of visiting artists from Belgium, Holland, Poland
and Russia, and had a significant impact on the nascent expressionist movement, which was
beginning to emerge in Germany. By 1907, many Fauvists had moved on to explore other styles.
Van Dongen joined the expressionist group Die Brucke in Dresden; Derain drew closer to Picasso
before favoring a more classical style of art; Vlaminck eventually exchanged his Fauvist palette
for a more muted style of realist expressionism. Matisse remained fascinated by colour for the
remainder of his life, although he dabbled with several different styles, including symbolism
and abstract art, before producing his immortal series of Blue Nudes at the advanced age of 83.
As the foremost colorist in modern art, he continues to be an inspiration for many twentieth
century artists.

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 Henri Matisse (1869-1954) as a Fauve pioneer -

Luxury, Serenity and Pleasure (1904- 1905)

The title of this painting is taken from the refrain of Charles Baudelaire's poem, Invitation to a
Voyage (1857), in which a man invites his lover to travel with him to paradise. The landscape is
likely based on the view from Paul Signac's house in Saint-Tropez, where Matisse was
vacationing. Most of the women are nude (in the manner of a traditional classical idyll), but
one woman - thought to represent the painter's wife - wears contemporary dress. This is
Matisse's only major painting in the Neo-Impressionist mode, and its technique was inspired by
the Pointillism of Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. He differs from the approach of those painters,
however, in the way in which he outlines figures to give them emphasis.

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Henri Matisse is generally considered the principal founding artist of Fauvism. Like many of his
contemporaries, Matisse was greatly influenced by Moreau's teaching that personal
expression was among the most important attributes of a great painter. Matisse turned away
from using subtle hues of mixed paints and began working with bright color, directly from the
tube, as a means of conveying emotion. He had been working outdoors since the mid-1890s,
and his travels to Corsica and the south of France in 1898 increased his interest in capturing
the effect of strong natural light. A summer spent working alongside Signac and Cross at Saint-
Tropez on the French Riviera in 1904 gave him a further opportunity to witness their techniques.

Open Window, Collioure (1905)

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 Harmony in Red (The Dinner Table) (1908), Hermitage, St Petersburg

Fellow Fauves: Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck

During the same years as Matisse's initial experimentation with Post-Impressionist techniques,
the two painters André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck met in 1901 and began sharing a studio in
Chatou, a western suburb of Paris. Working closely together, they developed their new mutual
interest in bold color and directional brushwork. Matisse met Derain in 1899, and two years
later, through Derain, he met de Vlaminck. As an older and more established artist, he supported
and encouraged these two kindred spirits, even introducing them to prospective dealers. In
1905 Matisse visited the studio in Chatou, where he was strongly impressed by de Vlaminck's use
of pure color. Matisse invited Derain to spend the summer of 1905 with him in Collioure, a port
and fishing town located on the southern coast of France. The two men spent this

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breakthrough summer working and refining their styles and techniques, producing numerous
significant paintings during a crucial four-month period of collaboration.

Maurice de Vlaminck - Restaurant de la Machine at Bougival (1905-6)

Maurice de Vlaminck -

Portrait of Derain
(1905)

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 Andre Derain - The Pool of London (1906) Tate Modern, London

The 1905 Salon d'Automne

Later that year, the Salon d'Automne exhibition was held at the Grand Palais in Paris. Matisse,
Derain, and de Vlaminck all exhibited works in this show; they were joined by other former
students of Moreau, including Henri Manguin and Albert Marquet. The paintings on display were
quite distinctive in their use of vivid, saturated color and spontaneous brushwork. Also
included in the exhibition was a more traditional-looking Italianate sculptural bust by
Marquet, and this figure's proximity to the garishly colored, energetically executed paintings
prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe the scene as "Donatello parmi les fauves" ("Donatello
among the wild beasts"). The term "Fauves" was thus coined for these artists; although it was
pejorative in its original context, it endured.

Andre Derain -
Portrait of Matisse
(1905) Tate
Modern, London

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 Raoul Dufy - 4th of July
(1906)

Raoul Dufy - Boats in Marseille (1908)

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 An Expanding Circle

Despite initial hostility from

critics, many of the Fauves
enjoyed commercial success
following the Salon d'Automne
exhibition of 1905. Their art
was featured at additional
exhibits held over the
following years, notably at
the Salon des Indépendants in
1907, where the main
attraction was a large room
dubbed "The Fauves' Den."
Meanwhile, other artists
began to join the central trio
of Matisse, Derain, and de
Vlaminck. The expanding
group of Fauves (all based in
Georges Braque- L'Estaque (1906) [National Museum of France) eventually included
Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault (another student of
Modern Art, Paris]
Gustave Moreau), Kees van Dongen, Georges Braque,
and Raoul Dufy. These artists traveled together, shared studios, and exchanged ideas freely
during the rather brief heyday of Fauvism.

The Primacy of Color

All the Fauves were intensely preoccupied with color as a means of personal expression.
Color and the combination of colors constituted the intrinsic subject, form, and rhythm of
their work. A sky could be orange, a tree could be blue, a face could be a combination of
seemingly clashing colors; the end result was a wholly independent product of the artist's
perception, rather than a faithful depiction of the original physical form. Additionally,
compositional elements were built up through the placement of color, rather than through
perspectival systems or draftsmanship.

Georges
Braque- Ship
at Le Havre
(1905)

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 Albert Marquet - The Louvre Embankment (1905)

Albert
Marquet -
The Pont Neuf
(1906)

Kees van Dongen (Dutch, 1877–1968) Known specifically for his portraiture, van Dongen painted
sensuous and often garish representations of the fashionable French bourgeoisie, and the
wealth that permitted their leisurely lifestyle. His subjects included Arletty, Leopold III of
Belgium, Louis Barthou, Sacha Guitry, Anna de Noailles, and Paul Maurice Chevalier.

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 Kees van Dongen - Le
Coquelicot (The Corn Poppy) (1919)

Kees van Dongen - Woman

in a Black Hat (1908) Hermitage
Museum, St Petersburg

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 Franz
Marc-
Bathing Girls
(1910)

Franz Marc will

forever be
remembered for his
paintings of animals
in brilliant colors
and simplified,
nearly cubist forms.
Paintings like The
Red Horses express
a sense of beauty
and perfection.

The Red Horses (1911)

In Red Horses, the depiction is sufficiently simplified so as to allow the color to be paramount.
The dynamic red of the horses suggested that Marc intended to emphasize an earthly
orientation for this particular group of animals. The white area surmounting the pyramidally
arranged horses can be understood as symbolizing purity or solace in comparison to the rest
of the canvas. To interpret Marc's use of green in the upper third of the painting with regard
to his thoughts on color is also enlightening. He said that once green in introduced, "You never
entirely bring the eternally material, brutal red to rest." In that spirit, the horses seem nervous beyond
all possibility of resolution. Only the blue, as Marc prescribed, lends a peaceful note to the
agitated atmosphere.

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CHAPTER III

The Fauves' tendency to distort form and color in order to express inner sensations was a
strong influence on the Expressionists, whose own artistic movement proved much longer-lived
and more cohesive. The German Expressionists, led by such artists as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, employed a similarly aggressive use of color in their bustling Berlin street
scenes and frequently grotesque portraiture.

Legacy of Fauvism
Despite being superceded by Cubism and, arguably, overshadowed by expressionism, Fauvism was
the most radical trend in art for more than 30 years. And though comparatively short-lived, it
had a massive effect on the perceived value and role of color in painting. In particular it
resonated strongly with exponents of German Expressionism: see, for instance, works like
Portrait of Gerda (1914) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), and the 'Heads' series by Alexei von
Jawlensky (1864-1941). Fauvist paintings were exhibited alongside German expressionist works
at the influential Sturm Gallery in Berlin, founded by Herwarth Walden (1879-1941). It also
exerted a significant influence on French expressionist painters from the Paris School,
inspiring contemporary movements such as Orphism (1910-13) and Rayonism (1912-14).
Fauvism was introduced to Scotland by the Scottish Colourists, a group of four painters -
Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935), Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937), John Duncan Fergusson
(1874-1961), and George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931) - who were strongly influenced by Matisse and
other Fauves while painting in France before the First World War.

Cézanne and Cubism

In a sense, Fauvism's demise can be also attributed to a renewal of interest in Cézanne. A Cézanne
exhibition held in Paris in 1907 revived attention in the artist's work, particularly his emphasis
on natural order and structure. Georges Braque, for example, began to favor a more restricted
color palette, focusing more on subtle gradations of color and scale. This approach led Braque
to fill his canvases with a crowded yet carefully ordered abundance of shapes and forms, as in
his 1908 work Road near L'Estaque, which is unmistakably a crucial precursor to the artist's
development of the Cubist style.

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 Aftermath
Ultimately, the Fauves joined together for a short but highly consequential episode, rather than
a fully defined school. Although they never produced a group manifesto outlining their artistic
aims, Matisse's "Notes of a Painter," written in 1908, formalized many of their shared concerns and
goals, including their commitment to personal expression and individual instinct, their use of
color as an independent visual element with an emotional effect, and their rethinking of
composition as pictorial surface. Even after the dissolution of the group, nearly as soon as it
gained its infamous nickname, Fauvism's ideas and landmark works would continue to
influence art for decades to come.

Andre Derain - The Turning Road, L'Estaque (1906)

Maurice de
Vlaminck –

The Seine at
Chatou (1906)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Fauves – fauv shilpider kotha” by Kaniz Sohani Islam

http://www.wikiart.org/
http://www.metmuseum.org/
http://www.theartstory.org/
www.visual-arts-cork.com
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/fauve.html

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Inked & Created by –
Sultana Doula
ID
Batch#

Printed in Dhaka, 2016

Editor – Sultan M. Mukut

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