Storm at Nice

Matisse reached Nice on 25 December 1917, hoping the southern air would clear a bad chest, and took a room at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage on the Promenade des Anglais. Then it rained for a month and he came close to packing up and going home. The weather broke, and he said afterwards that once he understood he would see that light every morning, he could hardly believe his luck. He never really left. This squall was painted from the window of the Hôtel de la Méditerranée, at number 25 on the same seafront, where he moved in the autumn of 1918 after the army requisitioned the first hotel. Passing weather was an unusual subject for him. Following Cézanne, he went after what holds still, and there is very little wind or rain anywhere else in the Nice pictures. The painting came to the city in 1960, a bequest from his wife Amélie.