This painting was commissioned by a Russian merchant living in Paris,
Sergei Shchukin, for his dining room in the Trubetskoi Palace, Moscow.
When Matisse painted this, he had just moved to a larger studio in the
Hotel Biron, where Rodin also lived. There he began to paint on a more
monumental scale. As we run our eyes over this large painting, we ¿ nd
delight in the decorative beauty, as well as the large, assertive shapes: the
decanters, the fruit stand, the arabesque patterns on the wall and tablecloth
design, the window, the chair, and the table edge.
The title calls attention to the extraordinary red in this painting, which is
dif¿ cult to reproduce in photographs. In fact, the red is the result of two
earlier paintings—a Harmony in Green and a Harmony in Blue—which
lie underneath the surface of this painting! Matisse’s work for Shchukin’s
mansion led him to create daring masterpieces of space and anti-space,
canvases as À at as Picasso’s yet both airy and open and vibrant in color.
Our next example is The Piano Lesson (1916), also by Matisse but quite
different from the preceding example. The composition is rectilinear and is,
in part, dictated by the metronome on the piano. The shape of this object is
repeated in other shapes in the painting, such as the small shadow on the
boy’s face and the abstract green form in the background. Notice in the lower
left corner Matisse’s own bronze or clay model of a seated female ¿ gure; the
brand name of the piano, Pleyel; and the painting on the wall on the right
side. This painting has been called “an artist’s monologue.” Did the mood
in France during the war have an effect on Matisse that is reÀ ected in this
somber painting?
Picasso had begun to develop his so-called “Neoclassical” style around
1917–1918, and it reached its apogee in this great ¿ gure grouping, Three
Women at the Spring (1921). This painting is completely unsentimental and
not picturesque either—not about femininity and not about some childhood
memory of Spanish women gathered at a spring. Instead, the painting is
heroic, and it ultimately developed from Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, with
many steps along the way. The weight—not just physical but psychological
and emotional—is tremendous, and one comes away from the painting with a
sense of having witnessed something important. This is the same feeling one
experiences with Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergeres and Seurat’s Sunday