Trois jeunes femmes nues à la draperie rouge

Louis Valtat was a French painter associated with the Fauves — he was part of the 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition that gave the movement its name when a critic compared the room of brightly colored paintings to "wild beasts." He's considered a key figure in the transition from Monet to Matisse. He was a close friend of Renoir, traded a painting for Paul Signac's car, and was put under exclusive contract by the dealer Ambroise Vollard for a decade. Trois jeunes femmes nues à la draperie rouge dates to 1912. Three nude figures stand and recline against an earth-brown ground, their bodies built in thick strokes of cream and pale pink. A bright orange-red drape spills behind the standing figure on the right, and a smaller magenta cloth lies in the foreground. The hair of two figures is rendered in pure yellow.