Fauvism lasted about four years, 1904 to 1908, and grew almost entirely out of Henri Matisse and André Derain painting side by side in the south of France. Here are the twelve paintings, each dated and located, that defined the shortest major movement in modern art.
The name came from an insult. In 1905, critic Louis Vauxcelles walked past these canvases at the Salon d’Automne, noticed a Renaissance style bronze standing in the same room, and called it Donatello among the wild beasts, fauves in French.
The word stuck to Matisse’s circle from that day on. I have told his full career elsewhere; this page stays with the twelve paintings and the museums that hold them today.
Fauvism in three facts
How long it lasted. Just four years, 1904 to 1908, among the shortest organized movements in modern art.
Where it started. Collioure, a fishing port on the Mediterranean coast, where Matisse and Derain painted together in the summer of 1905.
Who carried it forward. Braque worked in the style until 1907, then turned toward Cubism with Picasso the following year.
1. Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat (1905)
Matisse painted his wife Amélie in a hat piled with feathers and fruit. Her face carries streaks of green, orange and violet that follow no real light source, only the logic of the color itself.
The portrait hung at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, in the room that gave Fauvism its name. Gertrude and Leo Stein bought it soon after for 500 francs, about 100 dollars at the time, when almost no one else in Paris wanted it.
It passed through the Stein family for decades before Elise Haas bought it in 1948 and donated it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1991, where it hangs today.
2. Henri Matisse, The Joy of Life (1905 to 1906)
Matisse spent the winter turning his Collioure sketches into one large scene: nude figures dancing and reclining across a landscape of pink, orange and violet, with no real shadows anywhere.
At nearly six feet by eight feet, the canvas overwhelmed viewers when it debuted at the 1906 Salon des Indépendants. Even some of Matisse’s own Fauvist allies found it too extreme to embrace fully.
Leo Stein bought it first. Albert Barnes acquired it in the 1920s, and it has stayed inside his Philadelphia foundation ever since.
3. Henri Matisse, The Green Line (1905)
A single stripe of green runs down the center of Madame Matisse’s face, splitting it into a warm half and a cool half. Matisse painted his wife this way during the same Collioure summer that produced Open Window.
Critics treated the green stripe as proof that Fauvism had abandoned drawing from life altogether. Matisse never explained the choice beyond the logic of color balancing color.
The portrait now hangs at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
4. Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure (1905)
A small canvas, just over twenty one inches tall, shows the casements of a French window thrown open onto a harbor in violent pink, green and orange.
Matisse painted it during the same 1905 stay in Collioure that produced The Green Line, working a few feet from Derain most days.
The estate of Mrs. John Hay Whitney gave the painting to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1998.
5. Henri Matisse, Landscape at Collioure (1905)
A quick, loosely brushed view of the hills above Collioure, painted fast with color straight from the tube and patches of raw canvas left showing through.
Matisse used it as the working sketch for the landscape behind the dancing figures in The Joy of Life, the large studio painting he built that winter.
The sketch itself, small enough to carry outdoors in a single sitting, now belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
6. André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge (1906)
Derain painted the Thames in blocks of red, yellow and blue that have nothing to do with London fog. Boats and a bridge appear only as shapes for the color to sit on.
The dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London in 1905 and 1906, hoping he might do for the city what Monet had done a few years earlier. Derain came back with around thirty canvases.
Charing Cross Bridge is one of them, now held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
7. André Derain, The Pool of London (1906)
From the same London commission, this canvas turns the Thames near London Bridge into flat fields of orange, green and violet. Nothing in it tries to match the actual color of the river in winter.
The painting measures about twenty six by thirty nine inches. The Tate acquired it in 1951 through the Chantrey Bequest.
It belongs to the same London series as Charing Cross Bridge, though the two canvases share almost no color at all.
8. André Derain, The Turning Road, L’Estaque (1906)
A road bends past a lone tree and a cluster of houses in L’Estaque, the same fishing village near Marseille where Cézanne had painted years before. Derain rebuilt the whole scene in green, orange and cobalt blue.
At more than six feet wide, it counts among the largest and most ambitious paintings Derain made during his Fauve years.
It belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, part of the John and Audrey Jones Beck Collection.
9. André Derain, Big Ben (1906)
Derain painted the clock tower across the Thames near Westminster Bridge, with a small sailboat crossing the foreground in flat orange and blue.
It was one of the London canvases the dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned, all chasing the same view Monet had painted a few years earlier.
The painting has hung at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Troyes since 1976, part of the Pierre and Denise Lévy collection.
10. André Derain, Portrait of Henri Matisse (1905)
Derain painted Matisse in patches of green, orange and violet that ignore the actual color of skin entirely, applied with the same freedom the two men were using on their Collioure landscapes that summer.
Matisse painted Derain’s portrait the same season, in the same rough, unblended color. The two paintings now hang not far apart in London.
Derain’s portrait of Matisse belongs to the Tate collection.
11. Maurice de Vlaminck, View of Chatou (about 1907)
Vlaminck painted the river at Chatou in patches of red, green and blue applied straight from the tube, the same village where he and Derain had shared a studio a few years earlier.
The two painters called their loose partnership at Chatou the school of the same name, an early rehearsal for the color they would push further at Collioure.
The painting is now held by the Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse.
12. Raoul Dufy, Street Decked with Flags (1906)
Dufy painted a street in Le Havre hung with flags for the July 14 Bastille Day celebrations, rendered in blocks of green, red and white that ignore actual perspective.
He had converted to Fauvism the year before, after seeing Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté at the Salon des Indépendants, and exhibited with the group in 1906 and 1907.
The painting now belongs to the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Fauvist paintings, quick answers
What is Fauvism? A short movement, roughly 1904 to 1908, built on pure, non naturalistic color instead of realistic light and shadow.
Who started Fauvism? Henri Matisse and André Derain, painting together in Collioure in the summer of 1905.
Why is it called Fauvism? Critic Louis Vauxcelles saw the paintings next to a Renaissance style sculpture at the 1905 Salon d’Automne and called the room Donatello among the wild beasts.
What is the most famous Fauvist painting? Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, the 1905 portrait that shocked the Salon d’Automne and now hangs at SFMOMA.
How long did Fauvism last? About four years. Most of the group had moved toward other styles by 1908.
Is Fauvism the same as Expressionism? No. Fauvism used color as pure construction and stayed mostly French; German and Austrian Expressionism used distortion to show inner feeling and ran for closer to two decades.
The insult that named two movements
Fauvism did not survive long. By 1907 most of the group had scattered. Derain moved toward a calmer, more classical style, and Braque moved toward the geometric forms that would define his next decade.
In November 1908, the same critic who had named the fauves in 1905 looked at Braque’s new landscapes from L’Estaque and wrote that he reduced everything to cubes. Neither Braque nor Picasso ever adopted the word, but it stuck anyway.
Louis Vauxcelles named two movements without meaning to: one insult in 1905, another in 1908, three years apart.
Fauvism is the fifteenth of twenty stops in Art Movements in Painting.