![]() ![]() L'atelier rose is full of cool spring sunlight that washes evenly across the canvas, turning the studio's white walls and wooden floor pale pink, flattening them out and incorporating them in a decorative scheme of sharp greens, dark blues and ochres" (H. By the time the Russian wrote again to enquire tentatively about his panels at the end of March, Matisse was already working on the first big canvas in a sequence that might have initially fitted the spring/summer/winter theme. ![]() However it was the Russians Shchukin and Morosov who were the dominant forces.Īt the beginning of 1911, Shchukin wrote to Matisse to request a major commission for his Moscow home, "asking for three decorative panels on allegorical themes ('What do you think of youth, maturity and old age, or spring, summer and winter?'). Collectors from Germany, the United States and Great Britain vied for attention. His reputation had grown enormously and he found his most attentive and demanding patrons overseas. Following on from the execution of his masterpieces Le bonheur de vivre in 1906 (The Barnes Foundation, Merion Station, PA) and Nu bleu of 1907 (The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection), and then the so-called Arcadian series of 1907-1908, including the two version of Le Luxe (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen) and the Baigneuse à la tortue (The St Louis Art Museum), Matisse signed a contract with the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Pairs in September 1909. The years since the 1905 Salon d'Automne had been a period of intense labor for Matisse. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1984, p. It's of no value in the picture and would interfere with what I want to say" (quoted in Bonnard, exh. Perhaps I should indicate some light and shade, but what's the use complicating my problem. Bonnard recalled visiting Matisse's studio either in 1910 or 1911 and asking him why he painted his figures all one color, uninflected and without any tonal modeling, to which Matisse replied, "I know the sky throws a blue reflection on the figures and the grass a green one. Not only was the motif of the open window to assume a pivotal position in Bonnard's output, but it was following the acquisition of the present painting that Bonnard's palette began to take on the higher-keyed, more intense and expressive character that has been so highly valued by subsequent generations of artists. It is particularly notable that the present work, which shows Collioure looking inland and dates from 1911, Matisse's annus mirabilis of paintings of interiors, was acquired shortly after it execution by Pierre Bonnard, in whose collection it remained until his death. ![]() The window in this iconic painting represents the momentous opening to a new way of painting, a gateway to possibilities in expression that Matisse and other artists had just begun to explore. With shutters opened and thrown back, the dazzling light of a new day streams in and sets the room ablaze with color, as fresh sea breezes aerate and refresh interior spaces. The most apt symbol for early modernism, the momentous transformation that took place in the arts during the first decade of the 20th century, is perhaps the window, and particularly as Matisse painted the window of his room in Collioure during the Fauve summer of 1905 (fig. "He knows what he is doing and he manages to do it the first time." Pierre Bonnard, the first owner of La fenêtre ouverte, on Matisse. ![]() Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this painting. ![]()
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