Together, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, and Henri Matisse make up the most prominent representative figures in Fauvism from their time. In 1900, Vlaminck met painter André Derain and began painting together in a Chatou studio in the suburbs of Paris. In 1905, Vlaminck met Pablo Picasso and poet Guillaume Apollinaire. In the same year, he attended the Salon d'Automne with Matisse, Derain, and Albert Marquet, becoming one of the leading members of Fauvism. The 1907 Salon d'Automne in Paris hosted a Paul Cézanne retrospective, which not only greatly influenced Vlaminck, but also led him to change his style of painting. Since 1908, he transitioned from using primary colors to dark blue color tones, with image compositions that clearly reflect influences from Cézanne. Vlaminck’s large-scale exhibition in 1909 was highly successful. Since 1915, he shifted away from Cézanne’s style of painting by expressing themes like dense and pent-up sentiments, sharply-contrasting black and white snow landscapes, as well as vases of flowers. In Vlaminck’s later years, his painting style focused on a dark palette with outlines that display indignant, restless feelings.

The artwork Vase de fleurs is an expression of Vlaminck’s artistic connotations, as he “increased the brightness of all the color tones and transformed the perception of every object into solid color orchestral music.” With respect to brushwork, the painter had proficiently developed a painting method that resembles Van Gogh’s discontinuous brushstrokes, which uses paint directly squeezed out of paint tubes and unmixed colors to create strong image effects in making the colors vividly expressive. The chrysanthemum pours out of the vase and lights up the center of the painting. The petals’ light and streamline pen strokes display an elegant delicacy. The burning celosia continues to shift the focus of the image upward, making it look brilliant, enriched, and symmetrical. “Fauvism” is characterized by a bold sense of affection and the painter’s confidence in “impressionist” techniques. The sharp contrast between color blocks fills the image with a rhythm and tension, while the outlines concisely and powerfully express the petals’ sense of dimension. The vase of flowers on the ocher table and the background wall feature the painter’s exquisite arrangement of light and shadows. The delicate decoration and utilization of high light present the flowers in unified colors with a sense of freshness. Vase de fleurs is a successful painting that displays harmony, balance, durability, and stability without any feelings of oppression and disturbance.

Vlaminck believed that his passion is what drove him to boldly resist against traditional limitations. This piece of work demonstrates how Vlaminck developed Van Gogh’s discontinuous pen strokes and strong color tones in using sharply contrasting colors to create visual impacts. It also harmoniously displays a deep sense of spatiality in still life as a splendid visual enjoyment. As Vlaminck described, “I had been a gentle and passionate savage who does not rely on a single method. I portray the truth of humanity and I feel irritated that I could not work more powerfully on perfecting the levels of density and purity in my paintings.” Every piece of artwork is characterized by a powerful sense of dynamics and vitality. Vlaminck’s important artworks are collected by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg— they are rarely available on the market.