Émile Othon Friesz - ARBRES, AUTOMNE

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Émile Othon Friesz
1879 - 1949
ARBRES, AUTOMNE
Signed Othon Friesz and dated 06 (lower right)
Oil on canvas
31 7/8 by 25 1/2 in.
81 by 65 cm
Painted in 1906

Painted in 1906, Arbres, Automne is a highly significant work from a pivotal point in Friesz’s career when he was becoming increasingly involved with the Fauve movement. During the first years of the twentieth century Friesz was still painting in an essentially Impressionist manner, however, it was his encounter with the works of Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck at the celebrated October 1905 exhibition at the Salon d’Automne which encouraged the tendency of his art in new and pioneering directions (see fig. 1). His development as a Fauve painter was given further impetus during a visit to Antwerp and then L’Estaque in 1906 with Braque. John Elderfield notes the significance of this time spent in the saturated sunlight of the Midi: "In 1906, Braque and Friesz were not even at the stage of colorful subjects... It was only when the pair traveled south, as their colleagues had done before, that their color was fully liberated from the atmospheric and the impressionist and their Fauve styles were fully established" (John Elderfield, Fauvism and its Affinities, New York, 1976, p. 79). 
Although the artists associated with the Fauve movement worked closely together, Friesz’s paintings shared greater affiliations with the work of Raoul Dufy and Braque than with the oeuvre of Derain and Vlaminck. Friesz, Dufy and Braque all studied with Léon Bonnet at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and Friesz and Dufy even shared a studio in Paris for a time in the early 1900s. All three artists were born in Le Havre in Normandy, and were strongly influenced by the landscape of the area; indeed, the present work was likely painted in Normandy shortly after Friesz’s return from visiting the South of France. The palette employed by Dufy and Friesz in particular—although luminous and glowing—was also somewhat more subtle than the bold colors utilized by Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse. Alvin Martin and Judi Freeman have noted the importance of this Havrais trio: “The Fauves Havrais addressed a wide spectrum of concerns, making it difficult to define a single Fauve style or subject… To be Fauve in spirit was not just to paint in bright colors… Friesz essentially led the trio of distant cousins into the Fauve orbit; Braque led them out. Their association with the Fauves, coupled with their deep-seated beliefs in Norman—and by extension, northern—values… transformed their careers” (quoted in: “The distant cousins in Normandy” in The Fauve Landscape (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York & Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1990-91, p. 236).
André Derain, Trois arbres, l’Estaque, 1906, oil on panel, Private Collection

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