Achille Emile Othon Friesz began drawing with a passion at the age of twelve. He enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Le Havre, where he studied under Charles-Marie Lhuiller; the fact that the latter’s students included Dufy, Braque and Friesz, gains him frequent mention in art history books. In 1898 Friesz received a departmental scholarship and enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He travelled frequently in search of landscapes to paint. He spent time in the Creuse area of France in 1903 and in Antwerp in 1905, with Braque. In 1906-1907, he visited La Ciotat, Cassis and Estaque, again with Braque. From 1905 to 1910, at the height of the fauve period, he lived with Matisse at the Couvent des Oiseaux. In 1908, he returned to his native Normandy.
After an early career as an impressionist, he celebrated the primacy of colour under the influence of Van Gogh and Gauguin, before joining the Fauves. From 1908, probably influenced by Cézanne, he gradually abandoned fauvism in favour of a more constructivist approach, filling his palette with ochres, browns, greens and attenuated blues. In the 1920s, the fauve elements in his paintings became progressively rarer before disappearing entirely.
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