La Rance (1936)
This conversation is connected to La Rance (1936).
Émile Othon Friesz was a French painter who came up through Fauvism alongside Matisse and Dufy — they were all from Le Havre. By the time he painted La Rance, he'd moved toward something heavier and more structural, trading the flat bright color of his early work for thick strokes of green, rust, and pale blue. Trees rise in twisting forms along the riverbank, the water below mirrors them in darker tones, and a bridge in the distance holds the composition together. Everything is densely worked, paint layered on paint.