Der Tanz (I)

In 1909 a Moscow textile merchant named Sergei Shchukin asked Matisse for large decorative panels for the staircase of his mansion. This is the first version Matisse made in answer: a ring of five nude figures joined hand to hand, circling on a bare green hill under a deep blue sky, painted in almost nothing but those three colours. It looks effortless and is not. Matisse fought the composition to get that spring into the linked bodies, with one dancer's grip slipping loose at the front of the ring. He painted a second, hotter version for Shchukin the next year, and that one drew gasps and mockery when it was shown in Paris. This paler first version stayed with the artist, and only much later crossed to New York.