Study for "Luxe calme et volupté"

In the summer of 1904 Matisse rented a small house at Saint-Tropez, next door to Paul Signac, the leading Neo-Impressionist of the day. Signac painted in tiny separated dots of pure colour, a method called Divisionism, and Matisse spent that season trying it on. This oil sketch is him working it out. The bathers, the tree, the sea and the sky are all built from quick repeated touches, the figures ringed in blue. He borrowed the title from a line by the poet Baudelaire, a dream of some untroubled place. The larger canvas he made from it that winter went to Signac himself, and it hangs today in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.