1916, Henri Matisse, Studio, Quai St. Michel -- Phillips Collection (Washington)
From the museum label:
Richard Diebenkorn said of this work: "It wasn't until Washington that Matisse really hit me hard... The painting has stuck in my head ever since I first laid eyes on it here [at the Phillips]. I've discovered pieces of that painting coming out in my own [work] over the years." Painted during WWl, this work depicts Matisse's studio at
19 Quai Saint-Michel in the heart of Paris. Matisse made extensive changes while developing the composition.
To create the square tabletop beneath the window, Matisse scraped previously applied layers down to the white ground, seen in the tabletop's lower right corner. Its first shape was round, visible underneath the upper edge, before he decided to make it square. He then painted a smaller black circle, presumably a plate, inside it.
The infrared image reveals that Matisse originally painted a decorative iron grill in the window but painted over it. This architectural feature is seen in a similar but earlier composition, Interior with a Goldfish Bowl.
Matisse reworked the chairs several times, visible in the infrared photo and in the painting itself. He reworked the plane and dimension of the seat as well as the shape and dimension of its legs.
The prominent drying cracks above the nude point to a shift in her placement. As seen in the x-radiograph, the nude was initially painted higher on the canvas. Drying cracks, distinguished by their roundness, are the result of fast drying paint being applied over slower drying paint. A 1951 letter from the artist's son, Pierre Matisse, to Duncan Phillips acknowledges that these types of cracks were common in the artist's work between 1913 and 1917. He explained that his father was "baffled" at the appearance of cracks "after all the care he had taken to avoid them." Pierre Matisse assured Phillips that "these cracks are not dangerous and should not enlarge very much more."
1916, Henri Matisse, Studio, Quai St. Michel -- Phillips Collection (Washington)
From the museum label:
Richard Diebenkorn said of this work: "It wasn't until Washington that Matisse really hit me hard... The painting has stuck in my head ever since I first laid eyes on it here [at the Phillips]. I've discovered pieces of that painting coming out in my own [work] over the years." Painted during WWl, this work depicts Matisse's studio at
19 Quai Saint-Michel in the heart of Paris. Matisse made extensive changes while developing the composition.
To create the square tabletop beneath the window, Matisse scraped previously applied layers down to the white ground, seen in the tabletop's lower right corner. Its first shape was round, visible underneath the upper edge, before he decided to make it square. He then painted a smaller black circle, presumably a plate, inside it.
The infrared image reveals that Matisse originally painted a decorative iron grill in the window but painted over it. This architectural feature is seen in a similar but earlier composition, Interior with a Goldfish Bowl.
Matisse reworked the chairs several times, visible in the infrared photo and in the painting itself. He reworked the plane and dimension of the seat as well as the shape and dimension of its legs.
The prominent drying cracks above the nude point to a shift in her placement. As seen in the x-radiograph, the nude was initially painted higher on the canvas. Drying cracks, distinguished by their roundness, are the result of fast drying paint being applied over slower drying paint. A 1951 letter from the artist's son, Pierre Matisse, to Duncan Phillips acknowledges that these types of cracks were common in the artist's work between 1913 and 1917. He explained that his father was "baffled" at the appearance of cracks "after all the care he had taken to avoid them." Pierre Matisse assured Phillips that "these cracks are not dangerous and should not enlarge very much more."