Sitting pretty
The Moorish Screen inevitably calls to mind that famed Matisse quote about art being like a good armchair where “the businessman as well as the man of letters” can relax.
Conversation piece
It is one of his rare depictions of women in the fashions of the day: his daughter and a favourite model, Henriette Darricarrère. They make a genteel pair, surrounded by the gorgeously patterned decor of a well-travelled, bourgeois, bohemian family.
My revolution
But if Matisse preferred domestic serenity to the violence and politics of his rival Picasso, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t interested in revolution. It’s just that his upheaval was all about what you did with paint.
Flowered up
This is an early work from his prolific Nice period, when he left a starker, more abstract style for one where the eroticism erupts in pattern as much as in flesh. It’s typified by images of women, in harem pants or falling out of flimsy wraps. Yet they’re also sites of experimentation, and an exercise in joy after the horrors of war.
Part of Matisse in the Studio, Royal Academy of Arts, W1, to 12 November
