The Painting Session

Matisse painted this in 1919, in a rented room at the Hôtel de la Méditerranée in Nice. He spent the first three winters after the war there, working out of hotel rooms instead of a studio, and that decision shows in what he chose to paint. At the left, barely more than an outline, the painter sits at his canvas. The young woman with the book is Antoinette Arnoux, who was 18 and sat for him through those Nice years. The paint is thin and goes on fast, although the arrangement underneath it was worked out with a good deal of care. The oval mirror on the wall is the thing to find: what it is holding is the sea outside the window.