Maurice de Vlaminck

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958), French Fauvist painter, born in Paris. Before becoming an artist, he was a racing cyclist and earned his living as a violinist. He was largely self-taught, and attacked the precepts of academic painting; he once boasted that he had never been inside the Louvre. For a brief period after 1900 he shared a studio with his friend André Derain; together they were part of the group that exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1905 and became known as the Fauves (“wild beasts”). Vlaminck's work was greatly influenced by the colours and brushwork of Vincent van Gogh, a retrospective of whose work had been shown in Paris in 1901. Painted in pure, intense pigments, Vlaminck's Fauvist works such as Red Trees (1906, Museé National d'Art Moderne, Paris) provide brilliant colour contrasts. After the decline of Fauvism, in 1908, however, his work—primarily landscapes—became more subdued in colour and composition. Typical of these are The Painter's House at Valmondois (1920, Musée National d'Art Moderne) and The Village Road (1935, Arthur Macrae Collection, London). He also wrote several novels.