Selbstbildnis

The town Matisse was born in spent almost the whole of the First World War behind German lines. Le Cateau-Cambresis, in the far north of France, was occupied from August 1914 and not freed until October 1918, and his mother and brother were on the wrong side of the front in nearby Bohain, where he had grown up. Matisse painted this at the other end of the country. He was 48, he had settled in Nice the winter before for the light, and he was working in a quieter and much more closely observed way than the violent colour people attached to his name. In 1952 he gave Le Cateau-Cambresis a museum of his own work and chose the pieces for it himself. The self-portrait hangs there, about 65 centimetres by 54.