Les toits de Collioure

In the summer of 1905 Matisse took the train south to Collioure, a small fishing port near the Spanish border, and invited the young Andre Derain to join him. Over a few hot weeks the two of them pushed color further than anyone had dared. This view of the town's rooftops has no gray shadows at all. Matisse built the glare of the southern sun out of raw orange, red and pink laid straight against each other, the tiles, the baked earth and the church tower all burning in the same key. That autumn he showed work from this stay at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, where a startled critic called the group wild beasts, fauves. The name stuck to the whole movement.