Two Odalisques, One Being Nude, Ornamental Ground and Checkerboard

Through the 1920s Matisse lived mostly in Nice, on the French Riviera, in the calmer, more ordered mood a lot of artists took up after the First World War. He turned out picture after picture of odalisques, women posed as if in a harem. There were no harems in Nice. He built the settings himself in his rooms, pinning up North African textiles, spreading rugs and screens, then placing models among them. This one from 1928 shows two women, one clothed and one nude, flattened against a busy field of pattern where the checkerboard, the wall and the figures all press up to a single surface. He kept a whole store of these fabrics and props and reused them from canvas to canvas for years.