At the end of his military service in September 1903, Camoin was reunited in Paris with his former friends from the Moreau studio – Matisse, Marquet and Manguin – with whom he developed a colourist style of painting based on instincts and sensations, and able to translate lived experience into pictorial equivalents.
Cézanne was their role model. They had the same acute, sensory understanding of landscape and were eager to learn what he had to say to Camoin. They were particularly interested in the processes through which he organised his sensations on the surface of the canvas such as the condensation of form by means of colour.
However, the group, which wanted more than anything to free itself from academic tradition and the imitation of reality, developed an intuitive expression based on pure colour rather than local tone.
Camoin used colour freely to compose his painting in large, lively strokes. He applied paint in patches or flat tints of colour schematically rendered, and left areas of bare canvas visible, sometimes imparting a feeling of speed and improvisation to his work. He used a dazzling yet less bright colour scheme than his companions and knew how to adjust his feelings when experiencing the Southern light. As a young Provençal artist, he was used to it since childhood and regularly stayed in the region, sometimes in Marquet or Manguin’s company. His palette consequently stood out, characterised by pinks, shades of mauve, pastel greens, and a distinctive cobalt blue. His paintings were imbued with a form of softness, especially his female nudes and portraits.
Being more faithful to the transcription of the motifs set him apart from his friends, as confirmed by his exchanges with Cézanne. It is precisely through the interplays between motifs that the decorative component of painting emerges in his work, giving freer rein to composition.
Since 1903, the Fauves took part in several group shows in major Parisian Salons and at the Galerie Berthe Weill in Montmartre, but they truly won wide recognition in 1905 when their exhibition at the Salon d’Automne caused a stir, prompting the art critic Louis Vauxcelles to nickname them the ‘wild beasts’.
