Fauvism

In 1905 a group of paintings full of pure color and violent brushwork hung at the Salon d'Automne in Paris; the critic Louis Vauxcelles said it was like being in a cage of wild beasts (fauves), and the name stuck. Henri Matisse, a pupil of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, was at its center, with André Derain and others. For them color did not have to follow drawing or composition; it was a means of showing what the painter felt, and a tree trunk could be painted red. Albert Marquet was among the group, but he never gave up painting from observation, and he went on to paint waterside scenes through contrasts of gray and other in-between tones. Matisse called him “our Hokusai” for the way a few strokes caught a figure, a car, or a boat, a skill in which Japanese art has been seen as an influence.

In front of a waterside scene, find the grays. Next to which colors do they sit, and how do they make the water and sky look bright or dim?

Are the colors in this painting the colors the painter saw, or the colors the painter felt?

• Japonisme ジャポニスム→Matisse called Marquet “our Hokusai.”