How did Woman with a Hat shock visitors to the 1905 Salon d’Automne?

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Henri Matisse stands in a studio wearing a painter's smock, holding a palette beside a wooden ladder, with abstract artwork visible in the background. — Henri Matisse French artist Henri Matisse, photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1913.

At the 1905 Salon d’Automne, Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat shocked visitors primarily due to its aggressive use of color and unconventional technique.12

The painting featured brisk, non-naturalistic strokes of vibrant blues, greens, and reds that prioritized an energetic, expressive view over realistic representation. Viewers at the time were particularly appalled by the crude application of paint, which left areas of the canvas raw and exposed. This departure from traditional academic standards, characterized by the use of pure, brilliant colors applied straight from the tube, was so jarring that the critic Louis Vauxcelles famously dubbed the artists exhibiting these works les fauves ("the wild beasts"), marking the birth of Fauvism.21