Les Parasols
This conversation is connected to Les Parasols.
Raoul Dufy painted Les Parasols in 1905, the same year he saw Matisse's Luxe, Calme et Volupté at the Salon des Indépendants and committed to Fauvism. This painting is right at that threshold — still Impressionist in its beach-scene subject matter and broken brushwork, but the color is already pushing toward something bolder. Striped pink-and-red parasols anchor the composition against a band of turquoise sea, with figures sketched in quick dabs of navy, white, and pale blue. Dufy grew up in Le Havre and spent his early career painting the Norman coast, the same beaches Monet and Boudin had painted a generation earlier.