Still Life with Geraniums

In 1910 Munich put on a huge exhibition of Islamic art, and Matisse went. The rhythmic patterns of Persian textiles and ceramics stayed with him, and you can feel them in the flowering fabric that twists across the middle of this still life, tying the whole surface together. He painted it in his studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux just outside Paris, and the blue panelled wall and ochre floorboards are that room. Two years later a Munich museum acquired it, which, by the museum's own account, made this the first painting by Matisse to enter any public collection anywhere. It was also one of only a handful of the museum's works to come through the Second World War intact.