Audio Stop 13

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A French window with its sill lined with flowerpots opens into a view of boats floating in a body of water in this loosely painted, vibrantly colored, stylized, vertical painting. The doors open inward, and they are painted with coral orange and cranberry red. The wall behind the door to the left is peacock blue and the wall to our right is fuchsia pink, and those colors are reflected in the opposite windows of the doors. Three flowerpots in crimson red, marmalade orange, or royal blue sit on the windowsill in front of us. Foliage in the pots is painted with short strokes of cardinal red and turquoise blue. Over the window, a two-paned transom window pierces a forest-green wall. The view through the panes has a band of salmon pink across the top and dabs of celery green and banana yellow below. The dabs and dashes of pine and lime green continue down the sides of the window and across the sill, suggesting vines growing up around the opening. A band of ultramarine blue beyond the flowerpots could be a balcony. Several rust-orange masts of ships with hulls painted with swipes of indigo blue, flamingo pink, forest green, and marigold orange float in the water beyond. The water is painted with parallel strokes in pale pink and butter yellow. The sky above is painted with thick, wavy lines of steel blue, periwinkle purple, and seafoam green. The artist signed the work in red paint in the lower right, “Henri Matisse.”

Henri Matisse

Open Window, Collioure, 1905

East Building, Mezzanine — Gallery 217-B

Today, Henri Matisse’s Open Window, Collioure may appear gentle and lyrical, but originally its thick brushstrokes and intense colors were seen as violent. A small but explosive work, this icon of early modernism is celebrated as one of the most important paintings of the fauve school, a group of artists who focused on freeing color and texture from strict representations of natural appearance. Open Window, Collioure represents the beginning of this new approach in Matisse’s art.

Read full audio transcript

HARRY COOPER:

One thing Matisse said about color is this: “When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.”

NARRATOR:

And here you can see what he meant: pink waves, orange masts, a multi-colored sky.

Curator and head of modern art, Harry Cooper.

HARRY COOPER:

This little painting really had a big effect. We’re used to seeing it in posters, on calendars. But at the time, even for viewers used to impressionism, this was going much farther.

I think that central boat, which is just rendered by four thick strokes of paint, a sort of whitish pink one, a blue one, more of a salmon one, a dark green one: there is so much invention beyond what Matisse might have seen here.

NARRATOR:

The painting marked a milestone in Matisse’s career. He showed it at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, where one critic dismissed him—and some of his peers—as fauves, or “wild beasts,” calling their work an “orgy of pure tones.” But the name stuck, and Matisse led this loosely allied group in what became the first French avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century.

HARRY COOPER:

The central part is lovely and dynamic. But what’s happening around it, the framing— the walls, the windows—where he’s getting away from the impressionist stroke, the little touch- touch-touch here and there, creating that lyrical rhythm. And he’s starting to work with large areas of color and setting these against each other. I think that’s where we see the Matisse of the future.

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