Vue de Collioure (View of Collioure)

In the summer of 1905, Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck and André Derain discovered the village of Collioure, which lies south of Perpignan on the Gulf of Lyon. There they made a number of landscape paintings, including this one, with its view, painted with impulsively placed brush strokes, from a hill overlooking houses in dazzling sunlight on the shores of a deep-blue Mediterranean. Influenced by Vincent van Gogh's painting and the Pointillists who succeeded him, Derain and his fellow artists liberated themselves from the Post-Impressionist tastes that still ruled Paris. The painters, branded 'Fauves' – in English 'wild animals' – by the critics, developed a new style which was, for a short time, very influential, especially in Germany. The first owner of this majestic view of Collioure was the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard.