Fauvism: a highly colourful movement

Berthille Lorillou
Publié le 13 August 2025
Fauvism: a highly colourful movement

The Salon d'Automne of 1905 marked the beginning of Fauvism. In Room VII of this Salon, held in Paris at the Grand Palais, works by Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, and Albert Marquet were exhibited. Visitors and art critics wandered through the exhibition and discovered colorful, original works. On this occasion, Louis Vauxcelles wrote a mocking article that would give the movement its name. He wrote: 

"In the center of the room, a child's torso and a small marble bust by Albert Marque, who models with delicate skill. The candor of these busts is surprising, amidst the orgy of pure tones: Donatello among the Fauves."  

Louis Vauxcelles

One of the paintings that caused a particular scandal was Henri Matisse's Woman with a Hat, which earned the painter the nickname "King of the Fauves." 

Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat, oil on canvas, 81 x 60 cm, 1905, San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art 

This painting illustrates the main characteristics of this movement: an expressive color palette. Pure tones pushed to the height of their intensity contrast with each other. There is no drawing; larges areas of color form the motif. A black outline is regularly observed, delineating spaces.  

A chromaticism that defies the laws of perception 

This chromaticism at the beginning of the 20th century was made possible thanks to the invention of paint tubes in the 1840s but mainly with the theories on colors of the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul from 1839. Chevreul, working at the Manufacture des Gobelins, noted that the human eye does not perceive a color as such, but is always conditioned by the surrounding colors. He took up and improved the color wheel and theorized the complementary warm and cold colors, located opposite each other on the color wheel. 

Michèle-Eugène Chevreul, On the Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast, Paris, Pitois-Levrault et Cie, 1839

The painting style is reminiscent of the Impressionists and their vivid brushwork. The subjects and the chromatic dissociation between reality and creation are more reminiscent of the Nabi and Pont-Aven School. 

This work, with its ambiguous spatial composition and garish colors, introduces the painter's discourse of emancipation from the constraints of the thing seen.

Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon or Jacob's Combat with the Angel, oil on canvas, 72 x 91 cm, 1888, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland  

Gauguin played a formative role for the Nabi artists. He met Paul Sérusier and advised him not to depict landscapes mimetically, but to prioritize his own perception. This phenomenon is particularly visible in Maurice Denis's depictions of Annunciation. A before-and-after of the artist's liberties with color. 

Maurice Denis, The Catholic Mystery, oil on canvas, 97 x 143 cm, 1889, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Maurice Denis-Le Prieuré Departmental Museum 

Maurice Denis, Annunciation at the Priory Window, oil on canvas, 73 x 93 cm, 1916, Rodez, Denys-Puech Museum 

Some Key Works of Fauvism 

André Derain, Charing Bridge, also known as Westminster Bridge, oil on canvas, 1906, Paris, Musée d'Orsay  

During his trip to London, Derain produced around thirty canvases. He created the roadway and the cityscape in large flat areas of paint. The sky and water are created with fragmented brushstrokes reminiscent of Divisionism and Pointillism. The division of color echoes Signac's painting, The Red Buoy. 

Paul Signac, The Red Buoy, 1895, oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm, Paris, Musée d'Orsay 

Henri Matisse, Portrait of Madame Matisse with a Green Stripe, oil on canvas, 42 x 32 cm, 1905, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Art  

The color scheme is very similar to that used for Woman with a Hat. "The woman's face" is separated by a "green stripe" along the line of her nose. A sort of shadow effect is depicted on the left half of her face in greenish tones. Her hair is composed of blue and mauve. The whole is organized by a black outline. Matisse overturns the codes of one of the most valued genres: the portrait. Here, the painter abandons the guidelines of resemblance and staging that characterize the portrait. 

Raoul Dufy, Old Houses on the Honfleur Basin, oil on canvas, 1906, Honfleur, Eugène Boudin Museum

Dufy presents the old houses of Honfleur through a colored prism and plays on reflection. A play is created between the original and its reflection. The work is based on color more than on topographical reality. The landscape was a favorite subject for Fauve artists who, like the Nabis, traveled extensively. 

And the subject ?  

Fauvism, like Cubism, were ephemeral movements, but they marked the beginning of the 20th-century avant-garde movement. They continued with the Surrealists. Little by little, the subject began to disappear. Subjects became pretexts for painting. Maurice Denis, leader of the Nabis, said about this:  

"A painting is above all a medium for color."  

Maurice Denis

This can be seen a few years later with the artistic evolution of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) whose mature works are named by numbers. 

Piet Mondrian, Red Tree, oil on canvas, 1908, The Hague, Main Museum of Modern Art  

Piet Mondrian, Composition II, oil on canvas, 1930, Paris, Center Pompidou

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