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Andre Derain (1880-1954), Collioure*, 1905, oil on canvas (National Galleries of Scotland)
Here you are at the absolute beginning of Fauvism, before it had a name. As Derain painted this oil he worked side by side with Matisse at whose house in Collioure he was staying. Matisse was already in love with the intense light of this small Mediterranean port, and it didn't take Derain long to catch up and to be swept up in Matisse's enthusiasm for the intensely bright and sensuous energy of colors he felt himself (and probably was) seeing for the first time.
All summer the two painted together and remained friends even though their artistic lives went in nearly opposite directions. Derain ended up renouncing not only Fauvism but abstraction in favor of embracing neo-realism. (See CIWT Days 344, 345, 2/21, 3/218 for more on Derain's painterly path). But for Matisse the abstract use of intensely colored forms remained with him to his dying day, culminating - Ciwt would say (along with Many) - with his poetically reduced cut-outs.
*Please see CIWT Day 3/317 for Matisse paintings of Collioure
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