Fauvism Paintings

What is Fauvism?

Fauvism is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of les Fauves, the wild beasts, a group of modern artists whose new work emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, but the movement as such lasted only a few years, from 1905 to 1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.

What that means on a canvas is color used as the subject rather than as a description. A tree can be red, a shadow can be green, and the paint stays visible as paint. The name came from a critic at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905, who looked at the room where Henri Matisse in 1905 was hanging beside André Derain and called them wild beasts. They kept the insult, the way the Impressionists had kept theirs.

Where the colors came from is not a mystery. The avant garde in Paris had spent fifteen years looking at Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, and les Fauves took the lesson about color and pushed it past anything the Impressionists had kept of representational or realistic values. Within five years the same circle of artists had moved on again, most of them into Cubism, and modern art had a new argument to have. The movement lasted three years and three exhibitions; as a way of using color it never really ended, and modern art since has never gone back to describing a shadow as grey. Art history usually files it as the first of the modern movements.

One thing to be straight about. The three artists this movement is named for, Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, along with the whole of Matisse's later work, are all still in copyright, and so are Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Kees van Dongen and Georges Rouault. We do not reproduce work that is still protected, so you will not find them here and we have no collection for any of them. What this collection holds is the wider movement: the Russian, German, Finnish and Dutch artists who worked in the same manner and the same years, and the early canvases of painters who became famous for something else afterwards. It is a shorter list than a museum survey of the movement, and it is an honest one. Everything on it is painted by hand in oil, in seven sizes, framed or unframed.

Famous Fauvism painters

The fauvist and fauvist-adjacent artists in this collection, each with a collection of their own. None of them is French, for the copyright reason above, and all of them were painting in high color in the years between 1904 and 1912.

• Ilya Mashkov: 131 works, the largest holding here, mostly still life and portraits built from flat blocks of strong color
• Alexej von Jawlensky: the Russian painter of Schokko with Red Hat, whose heads are the clearest fauvist portraits in the catalogue
• Louis Valtat: 18 works, including By the Sea, from one of the few French artists of the circle whose work has entered the public domain
• Henri Manguin: 10 works from the Mediterranean side of the movement, painted in high color
• August Macke: 47 works, alongside 41 by Magnus Enckell, 57 by Piet Mondrian and 50 by Theo van Doesburg; the Mondrian canvases here are the early landscapes and mills, not the later grids

Famous Fauvism paintings

Famous fauvism paintings in the collection, by subject. The arts of the early 20th century moved fast and this is a small window, so the list is short and the prices are not: a small fauve canvas is as much work to paint as a large Baroque one, because the paint is the whole point. Each one is reproduced by hand in oil, photographed for your approval, and shipped free worldwide.

The table in strong color

A loaf of bread, a plate of apples, a bowl of fruit: this is the clearest demonstration of what the style does, because you already know what colors those objects are. Ilya Mashkov left more of them than anyone else here, and the Russian avant garde took the French lesson further than the French did.

• Still Life with Loaves of Bread, Ilya Mashkov, the most viewed painting in this collection
• Still Life, Apples, red on red
• Still life with fruits, fruit against a patterned cloth

Faces

A fauve head is not a likeness with color added, it is a likeness made out of color. The face is built from flat patches, the background is a decision rather than a room, and a woman in a red hat is first of all a red. This is the largest group here.

• Schokko with Red Hat, Alexej von Jawlensky
• Portrait of the Dancer Alexander Sakharoff, Jawlensky, a dancer in red
• Portrait of a Woman, Mashkov, a woman in front of a flat ground
• Portrait of a Boy in an Embroidered Shirt, Mashkov, pattern against pattern
• Portrait of A. W. Finch, Magnus Enckell
• Portrait of Mrs Agda Vilen, Enckell, Finland
• Self Portrait with Hat, van Doesburg
• Self Portrait, van Doesburg, before De Stijl

Landscape and the sea

Outdoors, the style does what Impressionism did with light and does it with pigment instead. These are the canvases where the early work of a famous modern artist turns up: the Mondrian mills and dunes here are from 1911 and before, made in high color years before the grids everyone knows. Art history remembers him for what came later; this is what he was doing at the time.

• By the Sea, Louis Valtat, the Mediterranean
• Le Rocher, Henri Manguin, a rock and a naiad at Cavaliere
• At the Garden Table, August Macke, a garden table in Germany
• Urban Landscape, Mashkov, a town in flat color
• The Red Mill, Piet Mondrian, an early canvas from 1911
• Mill in Sunlight, the Winkel mill, 1908
• Trees by the Gein at Moonrise, trees at night, in blue
• Church tower at Domburg, a tower reduced to a shape
• Dune IV, sand and sky, almost nothing else
• Evolution, Mondrian, 1911, the strangest picture he ever made
• Abstract Portrait, van Doesburg, on the way out of the figure
• Young Nude Male, Magnus Enckell

Related styles

Post-Impressionist paintings for sale end where Fauvism begins: Post-Impressionism runs from 1886 to 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Expressionism paintings are the German movement doing something similar with color and distortion at the same moment. Cubism art reproductions are what came next, and absorbed much of the same group of painters.

Frequently asked questions

What is Fauvism?

A style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the start of the 20th century, the style of les Fauves, the wild beasts, whose work emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values Impressionism had retained. In practice: colors chosen for their effect rather than for accuracy, visible brushwork, flat space, and a subject that is often quite ordinary. A landscape, a harbor, a woman in a hat. Like Impressionism before it, the movement was named by a hostile critic.

How long did the Fauvist movement last?

The style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, but the movement itself lasted only a few years, 1905 to 1908, with three exhibitions. Its leaders were Henri Matisse and André Derain.

Why are Matisse and Derain not in this collection?

Their work is still in copyright, so we do not reproduce it, and the same applies to Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Kees van Dongen and Georges Rouault. The collection covers the artists of the movement whose work has entered the public domain, which is why the Russian, German, Finnish and Dutch names outnumber the French ones here, and why the list is new to most people who arrive on this page. If a museum shop is selling you a printed Matisse, that is a licensed print, which is a different product from a hand-painted oil reproduction.