Art Revolution in the Roussillon

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As the century turned Aristide Maillol was simplifying the sensuous lines of his monumental sculptures in the small seaside town of Banyuls-sur-mer. By 1905 Matisse and Derain were exploding pure colour all over their Fauvist paintings just along the coast in Collioure. George Daniel de Monfried was taking delivery of Gauguin's canvases from the South Seas at his Chateau St Clement in Corneilla-de-Conflent and sharing them with Gustave Fayetteville of the Abbaye de Fontfroide near Narbonne. And, a few years later, Frank Burty Havilland, Manolo, and Deodat de Severac, whilst on a visit to the sculptor Maillot, discovered Ceret. When in 1910 they were joined by Picasso, then Braque and Juan Gris, Ceret was well on the way to becoming known as the Mecca of Cubism. Why the Roussillon? How did the revolution reach Paris and then the rest of the world from two obscure towns on the Mediterranean edge of the Pyrenees?