Henri Matisse and the Fauves

Tubboat on the Seine, Chatou by Maurice de Vlaminck

Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.4

Fauve Gallery

Matisse was deliberate and reserved, the opposite of wild. But Maurice de Vlaminck did match the public perception of what fauve painting represented: rebellion, roughness, disorder. A big, muscular man, Vlaminck raced bicycles, wrote racy novels, played the violin loudly, and embraced anarchy: "What I could have done in real life only by throwing a bomb...I tried to achieve in painting." He cultivated the fauve myth.

Vlaminck was a self-taught artist. Like Derain he lived in Chatou, a suburb of Paris, and the two often painted there together. Vlaminck's work exploded with bold new color and brushwork after he saw the paintings Matisse and Derain brought back from Collioure in 1905.