Henri Matisse and the Fauves

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1. André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.3 2. André Derain, Mountains at Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.4 3. André Derain, View of the Thames, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1985.64.12 4. Albert Marquet, Posters at Trouville, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.1 5. Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.4 6. Georges Braque, The Port of La Ciotat, 1907, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.6

These were paintings on the edge of abstraction. They negotiated new, unstable territory—were they essentially flat, patterned surfaces or a "window" onto the world? Fauve pictures stand at the border between pictorial illusion and the kind of "pure paint" that would become a preoccupation of twentieth-century modernism. As Matisse later observed, "Fauve painting is not everything, but it is the foundation of everything."