La Gitane

Matisse painted this woman in Paris, in the studio of his friend Henri Manguin, a painter five years younger. Manguin painted the same model at the same time, and his version, La Gitane à l'atelier, survives too, so she can be seen through two painters' eyes. In Matisse's picture she leans on cushions, bare to the waist, and looks straight out with a lopsided smile. Her face is built from patches of green, blue and ochre, a band of violet runs round her throat, and the background splits into yellow-green on one side and deep violet on the other. The strokes are thick and left unblended. In 1908, in an essay called Notes of a Painter, Matisse wrote that what he was after above all was expression. The canvas is small, 55 by 46 centimetres, and his signature sits in the lower left corner.