One’s ideas of the man and of his work are entirely opposed to each other: The latter abnormal to the last degree, and the man an ordinary, healthy individual, such as one meets by the dozen every day. On this point Matisse showed some emotion.
“Oh, do tell the American people that I am a normal man; that I am a devoted husband and father; that I have three fine children; that I go to the theater, ride horseback, have a comfortable home, a fine garden that I love, flowers, etc., just like any man.”
As if to bear out this description of himself, he took me to the salon in his perfectly normal house, to see a normal copy which he had made at the Louvre, and he bade me good-by and invited me to call again like a perfectly normal gentleman.[28]
Matisse differs from Cézanne, VanGogh, Gauguin, in the accentuation of feeling as distinguished from observation. While the three last named sought fresh inspiration from close and ever closer contact with nature, he seeks his inspiration in his own emotions.
It is this trait that makes him one of the leaders of Post-Impressionism, as well as a Fauve.
From the foregoing it is clear that Fauvism does not mean a particular mode or technic, like Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, etc., etc. It means a mood rather than a mode. Every painter in revolt against prevailing taste and standards was and is a Fauve.
Not all Post-Impressionists are Fauves, but many are so called, for instance, the following:[29]
Odilon Redon, Othon Friez, Picasso (the founder of Cubism), Van Dongen, André Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, George Braque, Raoul Dufy, Robert Delauney, M’lle Laurencin, Jean Metzinger, Pierre Girieud, Verhoeven.
Of the above four are well known Cubists; Redon is a poetic personality quite apart; while the others exhibit marked individualities in their work.