Most of his fauvist paintings were landscapes, or cityscapes. He captured local harbours and small towns as well as more open countryside. This piece, Olive Tree near l'Estaque, is therefore slightly different in that it focuses our eyes on a single tree in the foreground. To the right, a small section of a house can be seen and centrally we can stare off into the distance. The colour scheme strikes us immediately, bright tones dominate every part of the canvas and this is typical of the bold world of the fauvists. The olive tree itself leans in from the left, suggesting years of development in changing seasons and conditions. The trunk is predominantly red and pink, with foliage then created using dabs of green. This may not seem particularly unusual, but there is no let up in the brightness, anywhere in the scene.
The ground is a golden colour, whilst the sky is a light green which is similar to the tones of the tree foliage. Dark lines are used, however, for the purpose of creating form. They define the edges of the trunk and branches as well as the boundaries of the house and also they define all of the trees further off in the background. Braque found the countryside to be an inspiration for his work and found all manner of different locations to produce work from. L'Estaque, itself, features on many occasions within his fauvist work and he would even later produce more cubist-style paintings of this region too. He eventually moved into still life painting instead because of how he could easily manipulate the content and also see it from different angles with little effort.
It is believed that there were four paintings like this, all fairly similar, and all produced in 1906, at which point the artist would have been in his mid-twenties. This was a key period in his development, but he was still a long way away from the cubist works for which he is best known for. There may even some resemblance of influence from Vincent van Gogh within this painting, as the Dutchman would often capture single trees as the main focal point, and would also use bright and expressive colour schemes too.