Reader on a Black Background

Matisse finished this in Paris in August 1939. Britain and France declared war on Germany on the 3rd of September, a fortnight or so later. Nothing in the picture registers any of it. A young woman reads at a table, with loose pages in front of her and a bouquet of daisies and purple scabious beside her. On the wall behind, a mirror and a rapid drawing of a nude give her back twice more, so the same model is present three times over, once in the flesh, once reflected, once reduced to a few lines. The black ground is doing the opposite of what black usually does in a room like this. Matisse used it to open depth behind her, and the mirror pushes the far wall further back still.