The Window

In 1919 the Detroit museum became a department of the city, run on public money in a town growing rich on cars. In January 1922 this canvas came up at auction in New York, from the collection of Dikran Kelekian, an Armenian-born dealer and collector, and Detroit bought it with city funds. It is described as the first painting by Matisse to enter an American public collection, bought the same year as a self-portrait by Van Gogh that holds the same distinction for him. Matisse had painted it six years earlier at his house in Issy-les-Moulineaux, just outside Paris, in the middle of the First World War. The stretcher carries an older title, Interior, Forget-me-nots, with the date 1916. Those are the tiny flowers heaped in the white bowl on the round table, in front of the open window.