Matisse painted this view of olive trees while at Collioure, a small fishing port on the Mediterranean near the Spanish border. At that time, early in his stay, he had not yet developed the Fauve style of constructing his pictures with flat areas of color. As shown here, he was still experimenting, combining Neo-Impressionist blocks of color and daubs and squiggles of pigment applied with variously sized brushstrokes.

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