1907, Henri Matisse, Blue Nude -- Baltimore Museum of Art
From the museum label:
During the early months of 1907 in Collioure, a town on the French Riviera, Matisse painted Blue Nude, a work that marked a pivotal point in his career. Produced at the end of his Fauvist period, this remarkable life-size nude was unprecedented in its scale and physicality. It was the first major painting Matisse executed after the death of his artistic mentor Paul Cézanne in 1906. With its predominately blue palette and sense of solidity and form, it was his homage to Cézanne. It was also a strong reaction against the more traditional idealized nudes that were popular in the nineteenth century.
In Blue Nude the figure is vigorously painted and sculpturally modeled, and the work evokes a world conceived in terms of dynamism and flux. The painting also reflects Matisse's admiration for African art (he was one of the first European artists to appreciate its inherent aesthetic qualities). The earthy and sensual figure is symbolic of the primitive intensity of Africa, inspired by his first trip to North Africa in 1906. The palms in the background are a reference to the exotic landscape he saw in Algeria.
Matisse first exhibited Blue Nude at the 1907 Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where it was reviled by critics and attacked by the public for what they saw as its gratuitous ugliness. Leo Stein purchased the painting and later lent it to the Armory Show in New York, Chicago, and Boston in 1913 where it met with criticism, even prompting students at the Art Institute of Chicago to burn a reproduction of it in protest.
1907, Henri Matisse, Blue Nude -- Baltimore Museum of Art
From the museum label:
During the early months of 1907 in Collioure, a town on the French Riviera, Matisse painted Blue Nude, a work that marked a pivotal point in his career. Produced at the end of his Fauvist period, this remarkable life-size nude was unprecedented in its scale and physicality. It was the first major painting Matisse executed after the death of his artistic mentor Paul Cézanne in 1906. With its predominately blue palette and sense of solidity and form, it was his homage to Cézanne. It was also a strong reaction against the more traditional idealized nudes that were popular in the nineteenth century.
In Blue Nude the figure is vigorously painted and sculpturally modeled, and the work evokes a world conceived in terms of dynamism and flux. The painting also reflects Matisse's admiration for African art (he was one of the first European artists to appreciate its inherent aesthetic qualities). The earthy and sensual figure is symbolic of the primitive intensity of Africa, inspired by his first trip to North Africa in 1906. The palms in the background are a reference to the exotic landscape he saw in Algeria.
Matisse first exhibited Blue Nude at the 1907 Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where it was reviled by critics and attacked by the public for what they saw as its gratuitous ugliness. Leo Stein purchased the painting and later lent it to the Armory Show in New York, Chicago, and Boston in 1913 where it met with criticism, even prompting students at the Art Institute of Chicago to burn a reproduction of it in protest.