Matisse, Henri (1869-1954)
Bouquet
1916–1917
Oil on canvas, 139.7 x 102.24 cm
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego
Matisse came to painting later in life than his precocious rival Picasso and was introduced to Impressionism by the late works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The jarring juxtaposition of colors that distinguished Matisse’s paintings beginning in 1900 led to his being branded a Fauve (wild beast), a label that came to describe an artistic movement. Matisse retreated to a more restricted palette around 1910, but this large still-life, executed after the outbreak of World War I, demonstrates a return to the bold decorative sensibility and high-keyed color that would come to characterize Matisse’s modern vision. Matisse likened the best painting to a good armchair that provides relaxation from physical fatigue. This resolutely bourgeois conception of art’s function is well served by this elegantly informal subject: an arrangement of flowers—probably gathered in the artist’s garden—positioned against a loosely brushed grey ground. (SDMA)