André Derain’s painting The Bridge at Le Pecq (1904-1905) is one of the early examples of the artist’s Fauvist style. Derain along with Henri Matisse was one of the leaders of the fauvist movement, an artistic movement that developed at the beginning of the 20th century and flourished between 1904 and 1908. The group of artists, Derain, Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck launched the Fauvist movement at the 1905 exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants (The Salon of Independent Artists). The same year art critic Louis Vauxcelle used the term ‘Fauve’ (‘wild beasts’ in French) to describe this new style of painting. The nickname ‘Fauve’ expressed a mixed impression, appreciating the vibrancy and unrestrained energy of their paintings but also expressing shock and apprehension. The Bridge at Le Pecq was one of Derain’s paintings exhibited at the 1905 Salon des Indépendants exhibition.

In the fall of 1904, Derain was at his home in Chatou, a small town on the river Seine located northwest of Paris. During this time, he explored the area looking for new subjects to paint. The Bridge at Le Pecq depicts a bustling scene on the bank of the Seine at Le Pecq, an area where goods were transferred from workboats to horse-drawn carts. The Bridge at Le Pecq demonstrates Derain’s early advancements in landscape painting and his ability to combine different manners of painting. The background was executed in a Neo-Impressionist style, which was characterized by the use of a divisionist technique. Divisionism artists applied primary colors separately on the canvas in tiny dabs that would mix in the viewer’s eye. The flecked brushstrokes over the broad color zones resembled the works of Van Gogh. The Bridge at Le Pecq probably prompted the art critic Vauxcelles to comment on how Derain’s combination of elements from Van Gogh’s art and japonisme (a French term that refers to the fascination with Japanese art) were ‘ingeniously decorative’. In the painting, Derain used a vibrant and unexpected palette to depict a cold winter day. This can be attributed to the influence of Paul Gauguin, who used color to express the emotional and spiritual qualities of things.

The Fauve artists encouraged and influenced each other styles. For instance, the elongated figures in The Bridge at Le Pecq were probably connected to the works of Albert Marquet, a painter associated with the Fauvist movement. Additionally, Derain’s relationship with Matisse likely pushed him to introduce Neo-Impressionist elements to his painting. Derain spent the spring of 1905 with Matisse at the village of Collioure in the south of France. The village became the meeting place for Fauvist artists, where they painted some of their greatest masterpieces. The landscapes painted at Collioure, such as the View of Collioure (1905) represented Derain’s departure from the mixed-techniques that characterized The Bridge at Le Pecq. The brushstrokes in the View of Collioure no longer merged like those in The Bridge at Le Pecq. Instead, Derain moved to a new phase, in which he fully embraced Divisionism.