Interieur in Nizza (Zimmer im Beau Rivage)

Matisse arrived in Nice in December 1917, in the last winter of the war, and took a room at the Hotel Beau Rivage on the seafront. He said afterwards that it rained for a month and he had nearly packed to leave when the weather turned. The light that came out kept him on that coast for the rest of his life.

This is that room. The window stands open onto the balcony and the sea, and most of the canvas is given over to wallpaper, shutters and the greys of an ordinary hotel interior. He worked on it through that winter and into 1918, and it opened a long run of paintings made in rented rooms with the window open.

He was 48. That same winter he went a few miles along the coast to Cagnes to call on Renoir, who was 76 and painting with the brushes bandaged into his hand.