Maurice de Vlaminck had little academic training when he participated in the Salon d'Automne in 1905 with other Fauve painters, including André Derain, with whom he shared a studio near Chatou, west of Paris. Bougival is located on the Seine south of Chatou, where the Impressionists painted vacationing Parisians swimming, boating, and dancing during the 1870s and 1880s. In the "Locks of Bougival", however, Vlaminck portrays the quieter autumn season, transforming a scene of two figures strolling along the edge of the locks into a fireworks display of red, blue, and orange tones.