Maurice de Vlaminck

In 1892, Vlaminck moved to Chatou, a small town on the river Seine, just northwest of Paris. Several years later, he met André Derain, who was born in Chatou, and the two artists formed a friendship that would culminate in the Fauve revolution.  They traveled extensively together, applying their fauvist interpretation with its brilliant coloring and wide brushstrokes to the views around them.  After the initial stages of this brief but incredibly significant movement, Vlaminck's work reveals an increasing influence of Van Gogh.  After seeing an exhibit of his some years earlier, Vlaminck had stated, "In him I found some of my own aspirations. Probably from similar Nordic affinities? And, as well as revolutionary fervor, an almost religious feeling for the interpretation of nature. I came out of the retrospective exhibition shaken to the core" (Quoted in J. Freeman, ed., The Fauve Landscape: Matisse, Derain, Braque and their Circle, 1904-1908 (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1990, p. 21).

In Le Pont, one of his later Fauve landscapes, the palette signifies a shift away from the bright colors of Fauvism towards darker tones with greater weight. Vlaminck depicts a bridge over the Seine, a subject he relished for the vibrant interaction between the banks and their reflection in the river.  The central focus of the painting is the shimmering effect of light on water, rendered in overlapping strokes of white and blue, juxtaposed with reflections of the buildings and the bridge.  Le Pont displays the revolutionary fervor which had seized Vlaminck and pushed him, with his friend Derain, to redefine the boundaries of color and representation in Modern art.

Figure 1  Vlaminck, circa 1910