Interieur mit junger Frau (Lesendes Mädchen)

Matisse painted this in Paris over the winter of 1905, straight after the summer at Collioure where he and Derain had thrown out natural colour altogether. That autumn their canvases hung together at the Salon and a critic mocked the room as a cage of wild beasts, the fauves. Here that wildness is turned on a quiet domestic scene. The girl bent over her book is his own daughter Marguerite, about ten years old, and her hair carries nearly as many colours as the fruit piled on the table in front of her. Nothing in the room stays the shade it should. It was bought soon after by Felix Feneon, the critic and dealer who had championed the new painting.