Georges Braque

French, 1882–1963

The Saint-Martin Canal

1906

Oil on canvas

*Gift of Audrey Jones Beck*

98.271

When Fauvism shocked the art world at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, Georges Braque was profoundly impressed by the freedom of composition and flamboyant color of that radical style. Although this painting of a commercial waterway in Paris bears a resemblance to Impressionist works, the artist's use of vibrant color is drawn directly from the Fauves.

Georges Braque

French, 1882–1963

Fishing Boats

1909

Oil on canvas

*Gift of Audrey Jones Beck*

74.135

Georges Braque met Pablo Picasso in 1907, and over the next seven years they forged a revolutionary way to visualize three-dimensional reality in two dimensions. Because they used a system of geometric shapes to convey the underlying form of objects they depicted, their new style was called *Cubism*. In this painting, Braque organizes simple, faceted shapes—recognizable as boats, masts, walls, and roofs—into a tonally and rhythmically harmonious composition.

Paul Cézanne

French, 1839–1906

Bottom of the Ravine

c. 1879

Oil on canvas

*Gift of Audrey Jones Beck*

98.274

Paul Cézanne carefully recorded this view of the rugged hills behind his mother's house in L'Estaque, a town bordering the Mediterranean Sea in southern France. The artist concentrates on the sculptural facets of the sun-baked earth, set off by the pure blue sky and green shrubbery. Through his solidly structured composition and dense buildup of paint on the canvas, Cézanne translates this visual moment into an enduring image.

**Gustave Courbet**

French, 1819–1877

**The Gust of Wind**

c. 1865

Oil on canvas

*Museum purchase funded by Caroline Wiess Law*
2002.216

*The Gust of Wind*, Courbet's largest canvas devoted solely to landscape, was commissioned to decorate a room in a grand Parisian house. The artist was probably asked to paint a storm, and he approached the task with ferocious energy. The site is likely located in the Forest of Fontainebleau near Paris, but the addition of the hills in the background transpose this landscape into a fantasy. Adopting striking greens, russets, blues, ochres, and umbers, Courbet's expressive and forceful handling of paint anticipates stylistic developments of the 20th century.

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430

André Derain

French, 1880–1954

The Turning Road, L'Estaque

1906

Oil on canvas

Gift of Audrey Jones Beck

74.138

In this masterpiece, André Derain's color, glowing in flat-patterned shapes or exploding into sprays of broken brush strokes, is intended more to be expressive of the artist's feelings than descriptive of the particular landscape. The curving road, the tree trunks and branches, and the choreographed forms of villagers all sway to an integrated rhythm. The harmonious composition controls the brilliant, vibrant colors.

Francesco Guardi

Italian, 1712–1793

Regatta at the Rialto Bridge, Venice

1770s

Oil on canvas

Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation

1983.1

There is a smaller version of this composition in Amsterdam, and there is some disagreement about which the artist painted first, although most scholars agree that both the pictures are by Francesco Guardi. Pinpoint pricking visible on the surface of this painting documents the artist's typical procedure of using a large drawing stored in the workshop to provide a tracing of a specific view.

Henri-Edmond Cross

French, 1856–1910

Sunset on the Lagoon, Venice

c. 1903–4

Oil on canvas

*Gift of Audrey Jones Beck*

98.276

When visiting Venice in 1903, Cross wrote “of the far spread shimmer of the lagoon.” Upon returning to France, he captured this vision on canvas. He uses the distinctive colorful sail of a fishing boat from the nearby island of Chioggia as the exclamation point of his composition.

## Kees van Dongen

Dutch, 1877–1968

### Portrait of a Woman (Fernande Olivier)

c. 1906

Oil on canvas

### *The Lewis Collection*

TR:379-2014

In 1905 the Dutch-born French painter Kees van Dongen participated in Paris's Salon d'Automne, along with Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck. Their use of vibrant color and expressive brushwork prompted one critic to dismiss their paintings as the work of “wild beasts” or “les fauves,” a term that came to define this loosely organized association of friends.

*Portrait of a Woman* is typical of van Dongen's Fauve compositions. The model for this striking portrait has been identified as Fernande Olivier, known primarily for having been Pablo Picasso's lover and the frequent subject of his Rose Period paintings from 1905 to 1907. Unlike Picasso, who painted Olivier with exceptional tenderness, van Dongen rendered his model as an uninhibited *femme fatale*, whose pale flesh tones, sultry eyes, and fiery, red lips declare her modernity and vivid sensuality.

**Matsumura Goshun**

Japanese, 1752–1811

Snowy Stream, Edo period

Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper

*Loan from the Gitter-Yelen Collection*

Highlighting humankind's precarious relationship with nature, Matsumura Goshun paints a group of four travelers attempting to traverse a wide, swift-running river. The distant groves of blooming plum trees identify the wintry timeframe of the composition. Goshun began his artistic training in the *nanga* tradition, which borrowed painting themes from Chinese landscape painting traditions, including the penchant for plum blossoms and dramatic mountains.

Théodore Rousseau

French, 1812–1867

The Great Oaks of Old Bas-Breau

1864

Oil on canvas

Museum purchase funded by the
Agnes Cullen Arnold Endowment Fund

72.87

Théodore Rousseau was the leader of the Barbizon group of painters, named after a small village in the forest of Fontainebleau, southeast of Paris. These artists gathered regularly to paint scenes of rural France in a naturalistic style, as opposed to idealized images of Italy, which had been the subject of traditional French landscape painting for 200 years. Here Rousseau portrays a grove of gigantic, aged oak trees near Barbizon, their wild branches and gnarled limbs stretching up toward the turquoise sky.

**Thomas Gainsborough**

British, 1727–1788

Coastal Scene with Shipping and Cattle

c. 1781–82

Oil on canvas

*Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation*

1985.17

Thomas Gainsborough may well be the most brilliant British portraitist ever, but his first love was landscape painting, to which he returned throughout his career. In the early 1780s, Gainsborough painted several imaginary shore scenes. Demonstrating the artist's fascination with 17th-century Dutch landscape painting, they are nonetheless painted in his distinctive and personal late style, with thin washes and light tones. The Blaffer picture was copied at least three times, attesting to the popularity of the composition.