Äpfel

Matisse painted these apples in 1916, in his studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux outside Paris, while the war ground on not far to the north. These were his most severe years. The bright, decorative Matisse people expected had given way to something stripped down and architectural, with flattened planes, sober greys and blacks, and a table tilted up toward us. The apples sit on a pink cloth as a handful of firm red and yellow notes, almost the only warmth in the picture. He kept reworking still lifes like this right through the war, scraping back and simplifying. For so ordinary a subject he made the canvas surprisingly large, well over a metre tall.