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The biographies of Vlaminck and Derain are closely linked in their early years. They met by chance on the railway in 1900, when the train derailed and they had to walk the rest of the way to Paris. Until September 1901 they shared a studio in an old building next to the Maison Fournaise on the Île de Chatou in the Seine. Together they attended the van Gogh retrospective at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1901, which made a lasting impression on both of them. It was there that Vlaminck met Matisse, with whom Derain had been acquainted since 1898/99. The pairing of Vlaminck and Derain has been described as the 'School of Chatou'.

Derain and Matisse spent the summer of 1905 in Collioure in the south of France, while Vlaminck remained in the north for financial reasons. They exhibited the works they painted there, along with works by Vlaminck and others, at the Autumn Salon of 1905, marking the birth of Fauvism.

Like Vlaminck, Derain was primarily a landscape painter, as in The Cypresses. The painting seems to have been done quickly; the canvas is still visible in many places. The motifs are not executed in three-dimensional form, but are simply placed in the picture as areas of colour. Unlike Vlaminck, Derain did not use short, dabbing brushstrokes, but created closed areas of colour, each in one colour. Bright reds and oranges dominate, contrasting with greens and blues. Derain creates a sense of depth in the picture by staggering the objects.