Garverierne i Falaise, Normandiet 1901 - 1904

Othon Friesz made this painting of The Tanneries in Falaise, Normandy, with oil on paper. It's all about process here, with these washes of color kind of fighting each other, a push-pull of warm and cool, light and dark. Up close, you can see these layers of thinned-down paint, especially in the buildings. They’re not quite opaque, and that adds to the dreamy, almost fleeting quality of the scene. See how he’s laid down these quick strokes to define the architecture? And the figures are just these smudges of color, like ghosts in a sunny square. There's this looseness that lets the painting breathe. Friesz reminds me a bit of someone like Maurice de Vlaminck, another Fauvist painter who wasn't afraid to let things get messy. Friesz lets the painting remain open, not tied down by the need to have a definitive answer.