We look across a wide river with buildings lining the opposite bank as two tugboats painted with stripes and strokes of cherry red, white, and cobalt blue steam along from right to left in this stylized, horizontal landscape painting. The paint is loosely and thickly applied throughout. The water is painted with layers of short, horizontal strokes and daubs of ice and royal blue, shell pink, bottle green, and the red, white, and blue of the boats to suggest reflections. One tugboat is just left of center and passes the small village on the opposite bank. Smoke rising from that boat’s stack create eddies of cobalt blue, marigold orange, and petal pink. The bow of a second tug enters from the middle right. The riverbank directly in front of us, in the lower left corner of the composition, is painted with dashes of mustard yellow layered with horizontal strokes of burnt orange. The village on the far side fills the top third of the painting and parallels the river. Its buildings are butter yellow with blue or pumpkin-orange roofs. A few tall, narrow, emerald and avocado-green strokes suggest cypress trees growing amid the village. Horizontal strokes near the river’s edge could be another line of buildings. The building’s reflections are suggested by short, parallel strokes of golden yellow, orange, and green extending into the river. The trees, buildings, and boats are outlined in black. The sky above the village is mint green layered with thick strokes of white, and swirls of azure blue and light pink. The artist signed the painting with black letters in the lower left corner, “Vlaminck.”
Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.4

Fauvism

Saturated, unnatural colors and powerful brushstrokes made fauvist paintings radical—and widely criticized. Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck were among the artists dubbed “fauves” (wild beasts). While short-lived (about 1904 to 1908), fauvism was the first avant-garde wave of the 20th century. 

  • We look across river at a bridge with a city skyline beyond in this stylized, horizontal landscape, which is painted entirely with broad, visible brushstrokes in vivid, saturated colors. The river spans nearly the width of the canvas, and the riverbank is lined to our left with a row of several buildings between us and the bridge. Those buildings are outlined with royal blue and filled in with mostly flat areas of color in coral pink, mint green, tangerine orange, and pinkish tan. Letters across the top of the building farthest from us reads “BREVER.” Eight boats are tied up at the foot of the buildings. The pointed hulls of three extend into the scene from the lower left corner, painted in marigold orange and outlined in cobalt blue. Five more boats, with rounded prows and hulls and painted with lapis blue and muted aqua, line up like a row of empty shoes. The bridge runs from behind the tallest building to our left across and off the canvas, and is painted with deep lapis blue with crimson-red Xes crisscrossing the span to suggest trestles. The front faces of the pilings below are also highlighted with red. The river fills most of the bottom half of the painting. The water to our left is painted as a field of coral pink with a few, short horizontal baby and cobalt-blue strokes, suggesting reflections of the boats and a bridge piling. A narrow band of kiwi green and sky blue lines the pink field to our right. Next to it, the water is painted as short, horizontal, disconnected strokes and dots mostly in bumblebee yellow with some strokes in bubblegum pink and pale burnt orange, all against the off white of the canvas below. The final zone, to our right, is more densely painted with short dashes in indigo, turquoise, and aqua blue. Beyond the bridge, the skyline is painted in silhouette with spiky spires to our left in mint green and a mass of shorter buildings in periwinkle blue to our right. Four clouds of pale yellow billow off the bridge in front of the skyline. The sky above is painted with short and long vertical strokes of butter yellow, rose pink, pale orange, and a few areas of watermelon pink. The artist signed the work with cobalt-blue paint near the lower left corner: “a derain.”
  • People walk or stand along a city street in front of buildings outlined in amethyst purple and hung with flags in this loosely painted, vertical composition. In the bottom quarter of the canvas, the people are painted with a few strokes of brown, pale blue, dark purple, or pale pink. Two four or five-story buildings fill most of the rest of the composition. Four flags flutter from flagpoles along a balcony or arcade on the central building. Two flags have blue crosses outlined in white against red backgrounds. One other is vertically striped with blue, white, and then red, and the fourth has a yellow cross on a blue background. The upper-story exterior walls of the buildings and the sky are mottled parchment white with a few touches of very pale pink or yellow. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “Raoul Dufy 1906.”
  • Trees and mountains nearly fill this composition and are painted with long, mostly parallel brushstrokes in this horizontal landscape. The trees are painted with long dashes of royal and aquamarine blue, pine and mint green to suggest leaves on coral-red trunks. The grass below is lemon-lime yellow, and a walking path is picked out with lavender-purple strokes. The mountains beyond the trees are painted with flat areas of coral, apricot orange, and cobalt blue. The sky above is pale turquoise with a few swirling, cream-colored clouds.
  • A woman plays an upright piano as two boys play checkers at a table in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of flat color and pattern. The people have pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair. Their facial features are painted with dots or short strokes of black. The piano is against the wall to our left. The woman wears a short-sleeved, lemon-yellow dress with a long skirt. A music book is propped on the music stand, and loosely painted objects line the top of the instrument. The wall behind the piano is patterned with white and pale yellow flowers under and around arches against a cranberry-red background. The table where the boys play is in the middle of the room. The players sit in wooden chairs and wear black and white striped jackets with white collars. The boy to our right looks at the board while resting his left cheek, closer to us, in his hand. The other boy looks on with his arms on the table in front of him. The checkerboard sits on a red and white striped cloth, which has lines of black dots in the white strips. Beneath the table is a floral rug with blue and black flowers against a red background. The border is painted loosely with leafy shapes against bright white. Beneath the area rug the floor or another carpet is garnet red with a diamond-shaped grid painted in orange. A petal-pink, upholstered chair sits in front of a tall wardrobe in the back corner of the room. A picture with two violins against a blue background hangs on the side of the furniture to our right. A chest of drawers next to the wardrobe holds a few bowls or objects and a white statue, about half human height. The statue is of a person standing with one knee bent in front of the other, one elbow tucked by the side with that hand held to the chest, and the other bent elbow raised overhead. Pictures hang on the wall around the statue, and the wallpaper there is ivory white with a dark yellow pattern. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner, “Henri Matisse.”
  • We look across a sandy colored beach or walkway that stretches away from us to our right and then turns ninety degrees to our left in the distance, to enclose a teal-green body of water filled with rows of small rowboats in this nearly square, stylized landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with vibrant colors, in jewel-toned topaz and royal blue, emerald and mint green, pale orchid purple, golden yellow, cream white, and crimson red. The boats grouped along the beach close to us are lined up in a row along the beach to our right, punctuated by a few vertical masts. The beach across from us in the distance is lined with a cotton candy-pink, pale lavender-purple, sage-green, and pumpkin-orange warehouses in front of a line of cobalt-blue mountains along the horizon, which comes nearly to the top edge of the canvas. The sky is pastel purple, green, yellow, and peach above. The artist signed the work in dark paint in the lower right corner: “Braque.”
  • We look across a wide river with buildings lining the opposite bank as two tugboats painted with stripes and strokes of cherry red, white, and cobalt blue steam along from right to left in this stylized, horizontal landscape painting. The paint is loosely and thickly applied throughout. The water is painted with layers of short, horizontal strokes and daubs of ice and royal blue, shell pink, bottle green, and the red, white, and blue of the boats to suggest reflections. One tugboat is just left of center and passes the small village on the opposite bank. Smoke rising from that boat’s stack create eddies of cobalt blue, marigold orange, and petal pink. The bow of a second tug enters from the middle right. The riverbank directly in front of us, in the lower left corner of the composition, is painted with dashes of mustard yellow layered with horizontal strokes of burnt orange. The village on the far side fills the top third of the painting and parallels the river. Its buildings are butter yellow with blue or pumpkin-orange roofs. A few tall, narrow, emerald and avocado-green strokes suggest cypress trees growing amid the village. Horizontal strokes near the river’s edge could be another line of buildings. The building’s reflections are suggested by short, parallel strokes of golden yellow, orange, and green extending into the river. The trees, buildings, and boats are outlined in black. The sky above the village is mint green layered with thick strokes of white, and swirls of azure blue and light pink. The artist signed the painting with black letters in the lower left corner, “Vlaminck.”

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From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas. Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us. Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left. She holds the parasol with both hands, and her brown hair is covered with a hat. Long strokes of white paint across her face suggest a veil fluttering in the breeze. The tall grass she stands in is dotted with buttercup yellow and plum purple, and she casts a long diagonal shadow along the grass toward us. The young boy seems to stand on the other side of the hill, since the grass and flowers comes up to his waist. He wears a white jacket and pale yellow straw hat. His arms are by his sides, and he seems to look off into the distance to our left. A sunny blue sky behind the people is dotted with bright blue clouds. The painting is created with loose brushstrokes throughout, and they are especially choppy in the clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in royal-blue letters at the lower right: “Claude Monet 75.”

Impressionism

Impressionism is a style of painting that helped redirect art toward personal expression and artistic process. The movement originated in and around Paris in the late 19th century. Impressionists had stylistic differences, but they shared an interest in accurately capturing modern life and the fleeting effects of light and color.

Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.

Post-Impressionism

Post-impressionists took the impressionists’ recording of light and color in nature to more emotional and spiritual places. And each artist pursued unique subject matter and a distinctive style. Paul Cezanne was preoccupied with natural forms and spatial depth. Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh expressed themselves through bold color and brushwork.