COLLIOURE AND FAUVISM

This quiet Catalan fishing harbour had already attracted the attention of some in the artistic community including the lesser-known Impressionist Henri Rouart, who painted Vue de Collioure in 1891 (Musée Marmottan, Paris/www.marmottan.fr), before Henri Matisse and André Derain discovered its charms in 1905. This was at a time when they were experimenting with the use of pure colour in their paintings and their work, and that of the other ‘Wild Beasts’, can be seen as a flash of joyful light and colour in the development of new artistic thinking. The movement is essentially a French or Gallic one developing from the ideas of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists and is in contrast to the work of the Expressionists in Germany at the same time, which was born from a somewhat darker, northern European tradition. Matisse and Derain were both driven by a passion to experiment with the elements of light, space and colour and this resulted in a profusion of canvases in which the landscape and buildings around the town provided the vehicle to express their ideas. Their paintings are in no way photographic representations of what was before them but nonetheless it is possible to put oneself in the artist’s footprints and in this way perhaps gain a clearer insight into what motivated and inspired them.

Matisse
Henri-Emile-Benoît Matisse (1869–1954) was born at Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France, the son of a store-keeper. Parental pressure led him to study law and after passing his exams he settled down to life as a legal clerk in Saint-Quentin. It was then that a period of ill-health changed his life forever. After surgery to remove his appendix he had to undergo a period of convalescence and it was then he started drawing to pass the time. This changed everything and he became increasingly interested in drawing and painting and eventually this led him to abandon his legal career, with the reluctant agreement of his father, to pursue artistic studies in Paris. The portrait shown was painted by André Derain in 1905 (Tate Modern/www.tate.org.uk, on loan to Albertina Museum, Vienna).

In 1892 he enroled at the École des Arts Décoratifs where he met and became friends with Albert Marquet. He then moved to Gustave Moreau’s studio at the École des Beaux Arts and this gifted and remarkable teacher sowed many of the seeds of enquiry into the nature of colour that would fascinate Matisse for the rest of his life. Moreau died in 1898 and Matisse moved to the studio of Eugène Carrière, the French Symbolist painter, where he studied the human figure. It was then that he experimented with the ideas of Neo-Impressionism leading him to create the seminal work Luxe, Calme et Volupté in 1904.

Constantly seeking to push the boundaries of technique and intellect he adopted a palette of pure colour and it was at this time that he spent the summer months of 1905 in Collioure with his friend and like-minded colleague André Derain. The exhibition of their work, and that of others such as Vlaminck and Marquet, at the Salon d’Automne in 1905 received a scandalous reception and it was then that this group of artists were labelled as fauves or wild beasts and Matisse was regarded as the principal figure in the movement.

For most of the artists involved the movement was a short, explosive period in their lives but for Matisse the intellectual framework from which Fauvism emerged remained an important element in all the subsequent work that he created in his long life. Ill-health would again play a part in the story of his life and artistic endeavour when, in 1941, he underwent a serious operation which left him very weak and meant that he could only spend short periods of time out of bed. Although he continued to work with easle and canvas, he also experimented with other media and his life-long search for the union of line and colour was finally achieved in a series of gouache cut-outs.
In 1951 his life’s work culminated in the design of the stained glass, furniture and architectural decor for the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, close to his home in Nice in the South of France where he died in 1954.

Derain
André Derain (1880–1954) was born in Chatou, near Paris, his father being a well-to-do businessman with high expectations for his son. No expense was spared in his early education but there was no escaping the fact that Derain’s interests were not academic but painting, music and sport and he finally left school at the age of 16 with poor grades in all subjects except ornamental and linear drawing. The portrait shown was painted by Henri Matisse in 1905 (Tate Modern, London/www.tate.org.uk, on loan to Albertina Museum, Vienna).

His musical and sporting interests may have been a factor in his meeting and becoming friends with Maurice de Vlaminck who also lived in Chatou and who would become another leading figure in the Fauve movement. In 1900 Derain entered the Academie Carrière in Paris where he met Matisse and this older man would become a key figure in his development as an artist and indeed Matisse was instrumental in convincing Derain’s parents to allow him to continue his career as an artist. Derain was a naturally gifted and passionately committed painter and one who readily absorbed ideas from those around him. This led him to adopt the pure colour palette favoured by Matisse and the high point of his endeavours in this direction was probably while he was working side by side with his friend and mentor in Collioure in 1905.

By 1907 Derain was living and working in Montmartre where he associated with Picasso and his palette gradually changed and his paintings began to feature more geometric shapes and move in the direction of Cubism. The element of composition in his work had never been entirely subservient to experimentation with colour and gradually his work became more structured and stylized. After the First World War he was a leading figure in the “return to order”, a movement which tried to halt avant-gardism and encouraged going back to more traditional concepts and techniques.

He gradually lost his place at the cutting edge in the development of art in the twentieth century but remained successful not only as a painter but also as a theatre designer and producer of colour woodblock prints. Derain settled in the South of France and gradually slipped out of the limelight and by the time of his death in an accident in 1954 he was no longer the leading figure that he had once been. For him the explosion of light and colour that Fauvism had been had faded almost entirely, whereas for Matisse, who died only a few weeks later, it had remained an illuminating element in his work until the very end.

Other significant artists
Albert Marquet (1875–1947) was a lifelong friend of Matisse and was initially caught up in the excitement of the Fauve movement and exhibited with his fellow “wild beasts” including Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy, Braque and Manguin, as well as Matisse, at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. However, his palette was always more subdued and eventually he came to paint in a more naturalistic style. Among his paintings of the town are Rue à Collioure and Vue de Collioure (pictured here) created in 1912 and Fishing Boats Returning, Collioure and Le Port de Collioure of 1914.

Paul Signac (1863–1935) was a leading figure in the Neo-impressionist movement and he visited Collioure in the late summer of 1887 where he painted four canvases in the pointilist style which he described as “Four seascapes from Collioure, a Midi with blond shadows and sparkling soft colours”. He would later settle in Saint-Tropez. The painting shown is Collioure, la plage de la ville (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/www.metmuseum.org).

Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin (1860–1943) was born and educated in Toulouse before moving to Paris to continue his artistic career. After spending some time in Italy he returned to Paris where he became part of the Neo-Impressionist circle and was highly regarded, being awarded the Legion of Honour and given important official commissions for murals in Paris and Toulouse. Always a shy and retiring personality, he eventually moved to the tranquility of a country estate near Cahors in southern France and it was from there that he made several painting expeditions to Collioure. The painting shown is La Port de Collioure, 1920 (Private collection)

SELECTED PAINTINGS AND WHERE THEY MAY BE SEEN

If works mentioned in the text do not appear in the lists they are in private collections.

Derain
Henri Matisse, 1905 (Tate Modern, London, on loan to Albertina Museum, Vienna)

Matisse
André Derain, 1905 (Tate Modern, London, on loan to Albertina Museum, Vienna)

Rouart
Vue de Collioure, 1891 (Musée Marmottan, Paris)

Signac
Collioure la plage de la ville, 1887 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)