Dance II

In 1910 Matisse showed this panel and its companion, Music, at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, and the room caused an uproar: five red figures on nothing but a band of green earth and a band of blue sky, locked in a ring of dance. It was a commission from the Moscow collector Sergei Shchukin, meant for the staircase of his mansion. Shchukin, rattled by the scandal, at first hesitated, then wired Matisse from Russia to send the pictures anyway. They hung on his stairs until the 1917 revolution swept his collection into the state's hands. Look at the two dancers nearest you, whose hands reach but do not quite meet, leaving the ring open.