Selbstbildnis

In 1900 Matisse was 30, married, and short of money. To earn a little he spent much of that year painting yards of decorative laurel leaves on the scaffolding of the Grand Palais, then going up for the huge Paris world's fair. He pawned belongings to buy paint while his wife ran a small hat shop to keep the household afloat. This self-portrait comes out of those lean months. He paints himself in browns and dark greens, jaw set, looking back with no flattery, five years before the same man would be mocked at the Salon as one of the fauves, the wild beasts, for the sheer violence of his colour.