Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' ( French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

ists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had three exhibitions.

John Elderfield John Elderfield (born 25 April 1943) was Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 2003 to 2008.''Who’s Who 2011'', A&C Black, 2011 He served as the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Distinguished Curator a ...

, The ''"Wild Beasts" Fauvism and Its Affinities,'' 1976,

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, p.13, The leaders of the movement were

André Derain André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. Biography Early years Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. I ...

Maurice de Vlaminck Maurice de Vlaminck (4 April 1876 – 11 October 1958) was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse, he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 w ...

, and

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

Artists and style

Les Fauves, Exhibition at the Salon D'Automne, from L'Illustration, 4 November 1905

Besides Matisse and Derain, other artists included Robert Deborne,

Albert Marquet Albert Marquet (27 March 1875 – 14 June 1947) was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a lifelong friend of Henri Matisse. Marquet subsequently painted in a more naturali ...

, Charles Camoin,

Louis Valtat Louis Valtat (; 8 August 1869 – 2 January 1952) was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Fauves ("the wild beasts", so named for their wild use of color), who first exhibited together in 1905 at the Salon d'Automne. ''Les Fau ...

Jean Puy Jean Puy (8 November 1876 in Roanne, Loire – 6 March 1960 in Roanne) was a French Fauvist artist. Life and work He studied architecture at the École nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon and painting with Jean-Paul Laurens at l' Académie Julia ...

Henri Manguin Henri Charles Manguin (; 23 March 187425 September 1949)
2008 was a French painter, associated with the < ...

Raoul Dufy Raoul Dufy (; 3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French Fauvism, Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramic art, ceramics and textile as well as decorative schemes for public bu ...

Othon Friesz Achille-Émile Othon Friesz (6 February 1879 – 10 January 1949), who later called himself Othon Friesz, a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement. Biography Othon Friesz was born in Le Havre, the son of a long line of s ...

Georges Rouault Georges Henri Rouault (; 27 May 1871, Paris – 13 February 1958) was a French painter, draughtsman and print artist, whose work is often associated with Fauvism and Expressionism. Childhood and education Rouault was born in Paris into a po ...

Jean Metzinger Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...

Kees van Dongen Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauvism, Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually ...

and

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

(subsequently Picasso's partner in

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

). The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

.Tate (2007). Glossary: Fauvism. Retrieved on 2007-12-19
Fauvism, Tate
/ref> Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...

Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...

fused with the

pointillism Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...

Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as Divisionism, chromoluminarism and pointillism and used Conté, conté crayon for drawings on pa ...

and other

Neo-Impressionist Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, '' A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'', marked the beginn ...

painters, in particular

Paul Signac Paul Victor Jules Signac ( , ; 11 November 1863 – 15 August 1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the Pointillist style. Biography Paul Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. H ...

. Other key influences were

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

and

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

, whose employment of areas of saturated color—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at Collioure in 1905. 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 has been compared to Expressionism, both in its use of pure color and unconstrained brushwork. Some of the Fauves were among the first avant-garde artists to collect and study African and Oceanic art, alongside other forms of non-Western and folk art, leading several Fauves toward the development of

Origins

Gustave Moreau was the movement's inspirational teacher;Freeman, p. 243 a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a Symbolist painters, Symbolist painter, he taught Matisse, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault and Camoin during the 1890s, and was viewed by critics as the group's philosophical leader until Matisse was recognized as such in 1904. Moreau's broad-mindedness, originality and affirmation of the expressive potency of pure color was inspirational for his students.Dempsey, Amy (2002). ''Styles, Schools and Movements: An Encyclopedic Guide to Modern Art'', pp. 66-69, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Matisse said of him, "He did not set us on the right roads, but off the roads. He disturbed our complacency." This source of empathy was taken away with Moreau's death in 1898, but the artists discovered other catalysts for their development. In 1896, Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited the artist John Russell (Australian artist), John Russell on the island of Belle Île off the coast of Brittany."Book talk: The Unknown Matisse..."
Radio National, ABC Radio National, interview with Hilary Spurling, 8 June 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2008. Russell was an Impressionism, Impressionist painter; Matisse had never previously seen an Impressionist work directly, and was so shocked at the style that he left after ten days, saying, "I couldn't stand it any more." The next year he returned as Russell's student and abandoned his earth-colored palette for bright Impressionist colors, later stating, "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Russell had been a close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave Matisse a Van Gogh drawing. In 1901,

encountered the work of

for the first time at an exhibition, declaring soon after that he loved Van Gogh more than his own father; he started to work by squeezing paint directly onto the canvas from the tube. In parallel with the artists' discovery of contemporary avant-garde art came an appreciation of pre-Renaissance French art, which was shown in a 1904 exhibition, ''French Primitives''. Another aesthetic influence was African sculpture, of which Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse were early collectors. Many of the Fauve characteristics first cohered in Matisse's painting, ''Luxe, Calme et Volupté'' ("Luxury, Calm and Pleasure"), which he painted in the summer of 1904, while he was in Saint-Tropez with

and Henri-Edmond Cross.

Salon d'Automne 1905

After viewing the boldly colored canvases of

, Charles Camoin, Robert Deborne and

at the Salon d'Automne of 1905, the critic Louis Vauxcelles disparaged the painters as "''fauves''" (wild beasts), thus giving their movement the name by which it became known, ''Fauvism''. The artists shared their first exhibition at the 1905 Salon d'Automne. The group gained their name after Louis Vauxcelles, Vauxcelles described their show of work with the phrase "Donatello chez les fauves" ("Donatello among the wild beasts"), contrasting their "orgy of pure tones" with a Renaissance-style sculpture by Albert Marque that shared the room with them.Louis Vauxcelles, ''Le Salon d'Automne'', Gil Blas, 17 October 1905. Screen 5 and 6. Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Chilver, Ian (Ed.)
"Fauvism"
, The Oxford Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved from enotes.com, 26 December 2007. Henri Rousseau was not a Fauve, but his large jungle scene ''The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope'' was exhibited near Matisse's work and may have had an influence on the pejorative used. Vauxcelles' comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in ''Gil Blas (periodical), Gil Blas'', a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. The pictures gained considerable condemnation—"A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public", wrote the critic Camille Mauclair (1872–1945)—but also some favorable attention. The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's ''Woman with a Hat''; this work's purchase by Gertrude Stein, Gertrude and Leo Stein had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work. Matisse's Neo-Impressionist landscape, ''Luxe, Calme et Volupté'', had already been exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1905.Salon d'automne; Société du Salon d'automne
Catalogue des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, dessin, gravure, architecture et art décoratif. Exposés au Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, 1905

Salon des Indépendants 1906

Following the Salon d'Automne of 1905, which marked the beginning of Fauvism, the Salon des Indépendants of 1906 marked the first time all the Fauves would exhibit together. The centerpiece of the exhibition was Matisse's monumental ''Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life)''. Critics were horrified by its flatness, bright colors, eclectic style and mixed technique.Russell T. Clement, ''Les Fauves: A Sourcebook'', Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994
The triangular composition is closely related to

's ''The Bathers (Cézanne), Bathers,'' a series that would soon become a source of inspiration for Picasso's ''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon''. The elected members of the hanging committee included Matisse, Signac and Metzinger.Daniel Robbins, ''Jean Metzinger: At the Center of Cubism'', 1985, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press, pp. 9-23

Salon d'Automne 1906

Robert Delaunay L'homme à la tulipe (Portrait de Jean Metzinger) 1906

The third group exhibition of the Fauves occurred at the Salon d'Automne of 1906, held from 6 October to 15 November. Metzinger exhibited his Fauvist/Divisionist ''Portrait of M. Robert Delaunay'' (no. 1191) and Robert Delaunay exhibited his painting ''L'homme à la tulipe (Portrait of M. Jean Metzinger)'' (no. 420 of the catalogue).Salon d'automne; Société du Salon d'automne
Catalogue des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, dessin, gravure, architecture et art décoratif. Exposés au Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, 1906 Matisse exhibited his ''Liseuse'', two still lifes (''Tapis rouge'' and ''à la statuette''), flowers and a landscape (no. 1171–1175). Robert Antoine Pinchon showed his ''Prairies inondées (Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, près de Rouen)'' (no. 1367), now at the :fr:Musée de Louviers, Musée de Louviers, painted in Fauvist style, with golden yellows, incandescent blues, thick impasto and larger brushstrokes. Paul Cézanne, who died during the show on 22 October, was represented by ten works. His works included ''Maison dans les arbres'' (no. 323), ''Portrait de Femme'' (no. 235) and ''Le Chemin tournant'' (no. 326). Van Dongen showed three works, ''Montmartre'' (492), ''Mademoiselle Léda'' (493) and ''Parisienne'' (494).

exhibited 8 works, ''Westminster-Londres'' (438), ''Arbres dans un chemin creux'' (444) along with 5 works painted at l'Estaque. Camoin entered 5 works, Dufy 7, Friesz 4, Manguin 6, Marquet 8, Puy 10, Valtat 10, and Vlaminck was represented by 7 works.

Gallery

File:Henri Matisse, 1902, Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 72.4 x 54.6 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery.jpg,

, ''Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi, Notre-Dame at the end of the Afternoon,'' 1902, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York File:Self-portrait in studio by André Derain.jpg,

, ''Self-portrait in the Studio'', 1903, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia File:Robert Antoine Pinchon, 1904, Triel sur Seine, le pont du chemin de fer, 46 x 55 cm.jpg, Robert Antoine Pinchon, 1904, , 46 × 55 cm File:Matissetoits.gif,

, , 1905, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia File:Matisse-Open-Window.jpg,

, ''The Open Window (Matisse), Open Window, Collioure'', 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. File:André Derain, 1905, Le séchage des voiles (The Drying Sails), oil on canvas, 82 x 101 cm, Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne.jpg,

, 1905, (''The Drying Sails''), 1905, Pushkin Museum, Moscow File:Maurice de Vlaminck, 1905-06, Barges on the Seine (Bateaux sur la Seine), oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm, Pushkin Museum, Moscow.jpg,

, 1905–06, ''Barges on the Seine'' (), oil on canvas, 81 × 100 cm, Pushkin Museum, Moscow File:Georges Braque, 1906, L'Olivier près de l'Estaque (The Olive tree near l'Estaque).jpg,

, 1906, (''The Olive tree near l'Estaque''). At least four versions of this scene were painted by Braque, one of which was stolen from the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris during the month of May 2010."Interpol issues global alert for stolen art"
CNN Wire Staff, May 21, 2010 File:André Derain, 1906, La jetée à L'Estaque, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm.jpg, André Derain, , 1906, oil on canvas, 38 × 46 cm File:Matisse - Green Line.jpeg,

, ''Portrait of Madame Matisse'' (''The Green Stripe'') 1906, , Copenhagen, Denmark File:SeineChatou.JPG,

, ''The River Seine at Chatou,'' 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art File:Dongen-Hat.jpg,

, ''Woman with Large Hat'', 1906 File:Henri Matisse Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt (1906).jpg,

, 1906, ''Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt'', Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark File:Henri Manguin, 1906, Baigneuse (Woman Bather), oil on canvas, Pushkin Museum, Moscow.jpg,

Henri Manguin Henri Charles Manguin (; 23 March 187425 September 1949)
2008 was a French painter, associated with the < ...

, 1906, (''Woman Bather''), oil on canvas, Pushkin Museum, Moscow File:Matisse Souvenir de Biskra.jpg,

, 1907, ''Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra)'', Baltimore Museum of Art File:Jean Metzinger, 1907, Paysage coloré aux oiseaux aquatique, oil on canvas, 74 x 99 cm, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.jpg,

, 1907, , oil on canvas, 74 × 99 cm, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris File:Othon Friesz, 1907, Paysage à La Ciotat, oil on canvas, 59.9 x 72.9 cm.jpg,

, 1907, , oil on canvas, 59.9 × 72.9 cm

Notes and references

External links

Fauve Painting from the Permanent Collection at the National Gallery of Art

''Fauvism: The Wild Beasts of Early Twentieth Century Art''

* [http://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11445-the-wild-men-of-paris Gelett Burgess, "The Wild Men of Paris: Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves", ''Architectual Record'', 1910] {{Authority control Fauvism, Art movements French art Western art