The Pink Studio

In January 1911 Matisse came home from a winter journey through Spain to his garden studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux, just outside Paris, and some of what he brought back is in this picture. The big patterned cloth draped over the green screen is a Spanish textile, and the small jug on the stool in front of it came from Triana, the potters' quarter of Seville. Beside them stands his own recent work. The three nudes at upper left are his Le Luxe II, the dark bronze on its stand is his Decorative Figure, and at the far right edge, cut off by the frame, is a slice of his Dance. Sergei Shchukin, the Moscow merchant who was his most important buyer, took the canvas in 1912 and hung it in his mansion in a windowless dressing room lit from above. It has been in the Pushkin Museum since 1948.