CYBK8

On December 20th, 1917, Henri Matisse arrived in Nice for the first t.mes since 1904, making a detour in his travels through the regions of Marseille and L’Estaque. This was a decision to avoid spending a wart.mes winter at his residence at Issy-les-Moulineaux, on the outskirts of Paris. Although the artist was initially met with a month of inhospitable weather, a sudden burst of sunshine altered the trajectory of his career: “I came to Nice..and it rained for a month. Finally I decided to leave. The next day the mistral chased the clouds away and it was beautiful…When I realized that every morning I would see this light again,” the artist declared, “I could not describe my joy. I decided not to leave Nice, and I stayed there practically all my life” (the artist quoted in Dominique Fourcade, Écrits et propos sur l’art, Paris, 1971, p. 122-23). Enthralled by the dazzling atmosphere of the Le Midi, the region that would inform his oeuvre more than any other, Matisse embarked on a long period of creative transformation. Executed in 1918, at the beginning of the artist’s storied Nice Period, Le Bouquet d’anémones marks this watershed moment and epitomizes the resplendent still lifes that define this phase of his career.

By this point an artist of international renown, Matisse spent his first stay at the glamorous coastal city in a series of modest lodgings, initially the Hôtel Beau Rivage, with its direct view of the sea, and later 105, Quai du Midi, the Villa des Alliés and the Hôtel de la Méditerranée. Reinvigorated by the Riviera’s singular quality of light, described by the artist as “silvered…gentle and soft” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art (and traveling), Henri Matisse: The Early Years in Nice, 1916-1930, pp. 23), the artist focused on interior scenes that explored the interplay of light on carefully arranged figurative elements, with each new setting and its unique furnishings offering fresh visual possibilities.

Marking a retreat from the near-abstract mode and somber hues that dominated his canvases of the war years (see fig. 1), Le Bouquet d’anémones achieves a refined conception of space through a subtle and warm palette. Likening the modern master to Vermeer and Chardin (see fig. 2), John Elderfield writes, "Matisse rejoiced in the light of Nice…Thus, the flat, arbitrary colors of his preceding paintings, both 'decorative' and 'experimental,' were replaced by a much broader range of soft tonalities that convey how reflected light will suffuse an interior, associating whoever or whatever is within it. Light is almost palpable in these paintings. Their sensuality and the quality of meditation they afford both depend on the gentle pulsation of light through them" (Exh. Cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, 1992-93, p. 289).

Bathed in soft, radiant light, the present work typifies this meditative quality. The nuanced effects of light reflected in the pewter jug and refracted within the vase contrast beautifully with the jewel-like hues of the anemones, which nearly spill over the confines of the vase in their abundance. This vibrancy is further enlivened by the warm, enveloping backdrop, recalling the late still lifes of Manet, where flowers, casually arranged in a crystal vase, gleam against planes of solid color (see fig. 3). With its atmospheric depth and inner luminosity, the present work reaffirms Matisse’s place as one of the leading colorists of the twentieth century.

Le Bouquet d’anémones testifies to the floral still life—with anemones the defining flower of the Nice Period—as a basis for Matisse’s lifelong investigation of the possibilities of pure color. The artist would write in the year following the execution of the present work, “I have a glorious garden with lots of flowers, which for me are by far the best lessons in color composition. The flowers often give me impressions of color that are indelibly burnt onto my retina. Later, when I stand palette in hand before a composition and know only approximately which color I should apply, a memory like that may appear in my mind's eye, and come to my aid, give me a clue” (quoted in Ragnar Hoppe, “Pa visit hos Matisse,” Städer och Konstnärer: resebrev oche essäer om konst, Stockholm, 1931, n.p.). Created during Matisse’s regular visits to Pierre-Auguste Renoir at his villa in nearby Cagnes-sur-Mer, the present work is informed by his Impressionist forerunner’s vital floral compositions which capture the unparalleled richness of Mediterranean sunlight.

Pierre Schneider describes the challenge Matisse faced at this juncture: “The difficulty was that a return to realistic representation was at once necessary and impossible. Unless—and this was the solution Matisse was looking for—the abstract image could be made to look like a realistic representation…Matisse was no longer satisfied with merely combining the two-and three-dimensional systems: he now wanted two-dimensional space to create effects which had so far been produced by three-dimensional space. It was no longer a question of skilfully combining realism with abstraction, but of getting abstraction to simulate realism” (ibid., p. 508). The radical compression of space and strong sense of internal movement in his still lifes from this period echo those of Paul Cézanne, which similarly shift the static representation of a vase of flowers into an active scene and subvert the viewer's expectations.

The objects in Le Bouquet d’anémones belong to what the artist termed his “working library” of vessels, textiles, cost.mes s and other possessions, a repertory which offered the artist a wealth of visual possibilities through infinite configurations and the emotional responses they could elicit, as Claudine Grammont notes, “Matisse’s work is based on dialogue and collects ion…Accordingly, an object in a painting by Matisse cannot be considered in isolation...he did not paint an object so much as he painted the emotion that the object stirred in him, and the physical and psychological relationship between himself and the object. Pai
nting an object became a matter of introspection rather than of observation” (Exh. Cat., Boston, Museum of Replica Handbags s (and traveling), Matisse in the Studio, 2017, p. 26). Perhaps most notable among the items in the present work is an underpainting suggestive of the artist’s sculpture Nu accroupi, bras autour du genou, also conceived in 1918. Inclusion of other artworks of his within a painting is not uncommon, as Cécile Debray writes, they “[act] as miniature evocations of earlier formal solutions,” and “allows for three-dimensionality without the model’s destabilizing presence” (Exh. Cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (and traveling), Matisse: In Search of True Painting, 2012, pp. 89-90).

After several years of seasonal trips to the Côte d'Azur, Matisse took up permanent residence in Nice in 1921. The present work ushers in a long period of investigation of the possibilities of Mediterranean light and color that would define the remainder of his practice, culminating in the paper cut-outs of his final decade. Le Bouquet d’anémones bears an esteemed provenance, having been held in the collects ion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for over three-quarters of a century.

Artist

Henri Matisse