Oil on canvas; 56.5 x 47.6 cm.

Maurice de Vlaminck, (b. April 4, 1876, Paris, France—d. October 11, 1958, Rueil-la-Gadelière), French painter who was one of the creators of the painting style known as Fauvism.

Vlaminck was noted for his brash temperament and broad interests; he was at various times a musician, actor, racing cyclist, and novelist. He was also a self-taught artist who proudly shunned academic training, aside from drawing lessons. In 1900 Vlaminck met the painter André Derain during a train accident, and the two shared a studio from 1900 to 1901.

In 1901 Vlaminck saw an exhibition of the paintings of the Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh, and like Derain and many other young artists, he was struck by van Gogh’s powerful brushwork and use of intense, non-naturalistic colors. That same year, Derain introduced Vlaminck to Henri Matisse. Vlaminck was soon experimenting with pure, intense color drawn straight from the tube and applied in thick daubs. He exhibited with Matisse and Derain in 1905 at the Salon des Indépendants and at the controversial group show at the Salon d’Automne. It was at the latter exhibition that the critic Louis Vauxcelles called these artists fauves (“wild beasts”); he considered their canvases of bold color, applied in a spontaneous and impulsive manner, too unrefined. Vlaminck usually preferred a palette of primary colors, as seen in Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou (1906).

Impressed by a retrospective exhibition of Paul Cézanne’s paintings in 1907, Vlaminck began to emulate the Post-Impressionist artist’s work. He adopted a more subdued palette and turned to painting landscapes with solid compositions. After World War I he left Paris and moved to the countryside, where he painted rural scenes in a dramatic yet mannered style. Vlaminck also continued to write poetry, fiction, and memoirs, and he illustrated a number of books.

Tags:   maurice de vlaminck vlaminck painter 20th century french 1905 1900s woman with a hat national gallery of art washington portrait hat fauvism

© All Rights Reserved

Oil on canvas; 166.5 x 119.5 cm.

Ker-Xavier Roussel was a French painter associated with Les Nabis. Born in Lorry-lès-Metz, Moselle, at age fifteen he studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris; alongside his friend Édouard Vuillard, he also studied at the studio of painter Diogène Maillart. In 1888 he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts, and soon began frequenting the Académie Julian where Maurice Denis and other students formed the group Les Nabis. He is best known for paintings of French landscapes usually depicting women, children, nymphs and fauns in bucolic settings. In 1899, Roussel, Vuillard, and another close friend, Pierre Bonnard, traveled to Lake Como, Venice and Milan.

Roussel is mentioned in Gertrude Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. There she recounts an exchange he had with Theodore Duret in Vollard's shop at an uncertain date after 1904. Roussel complained of the lack of recognition that he and the other Nabi painters had to contend with. Duret consoled him by pointing out his incompatibility with the manners and fashions of the bourgeois world and the differences between "art" and "official art".

Tags:   ker-xavier roussel roussel painter 20th century french 1911 1910s rural festival hermitage post-impressionism group landscape trees mythology nabis children

© All Rights Reserved

Tempera on canvas; 75 x 154 cm.

Vuillard studied art from 1886 to 1888 at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1889 he joined a group of art students that included Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Sérusier, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Félix Vallotton. They called themselves the Nabis (Hebrew for “Prophets”), and they drew their inspiration from the Synthetist paintings of Paul Gauguin’s Pont-Aven period. Like Gauguin, the Nabis advocated a symbolic, rather than a naturalistic, approach to color, and they usually applied their paint in ways that emphasized the flat surface of the canvas. Their admiration of Japanese woodcuts, which were then in vogue in Europe, inspired them to use simplified shapes and strong contours. Many of his works deal with domestic and dressmaking scenes set in his mother’s bourgeois home. In the paintings and prints of his Nabi period, he often created flattened space by filling his compositions with the contrasting rich patterns of wallpaper and women’s dresses. Because of their focus on intimate interior scenes, both Vuillard and Bonnard were also called Intimists.

In addition to painting, Vuillard, like most of the other Nabis, was involved in book illustration, poster design, and designs for the theatre. In 1893 Vuillard helped found Aurélien Lugné-Poë’s Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, which produced Symbolist plays. Vuillard designed stage sets and illustrated programs. In 1899 the Nabis exhibited together for the last time. That year Vuillard began to paint in a more naturalistic style. He also executed two series of masterful lithographs that reveal his great debt to Japanese woodcuts. Vuillard continued to receive numerous commissions to paint portraits and decorative works for private patrons as well as for public buildings. His public paintings included the decorations in the foyer of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1913) and murals in the Palais de Chaillot (1937) and in the League of Nations in Geneva (1939).

Vuillard retained an Intimist sensibility for his entire career; even when painting portraits and landscapes, he instilled his compositions with a sense of quiet domesticity. In the early 20th century, when European art was influenced by the development of avant-garde styles such as Cubism and Futurism, many critics and artists viewed Vuillard as conservative. Paintings from his Nabi period received the most popular and critical approval, with critics often dismissing his later work. However, in the late 20th century, historians and critics began to devote more attention to Vuillard’s achievements as a decorative painter and designer.

Tags:   edouard vuillard vuillard painter 20th century french 1917 1910s a munitions factory in lyon war world war I post-impressionism factory

© All Rights Reserved

Tags:   georges rouault rouault painter 20th century french 1907 fauvism modern portrait group 1900s

© All Rights Reserved

Jacques Villon was a French imressionist painter and printmaker. Born Gaston Emile Duchamp he came from a prosperous and artistically inclined family. While he was a young man, his maternal grandfather Emile Nicolle, successful businessman and artist, taught him and his siblings.

Gaston Duchamp was the elder brother of:
* Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), sculptor

* Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), painter, sculptor and author

* Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889-1963), painter

In 1894, he and his brother Raymond moved to the Montmartre area of Paris. There, he studied law at the University of Paris but received his father's permission to study art on the condition that he continue studying law.

Tags:   jacque villon villon painter 20th century french 1902 1900s the game is solitaire figure interior animal dog post expressionism fauvism

© All Rights Reserved