Woman sitting in an armchair

By 1923 Matisse had settled into Nice and into a much quieter life than his reputation. The man who had scandalised Paris before the war with slabs of raw colour was now renting rooms above the seafront and spending his mornings arranging a model, a chair and a few patterned cloths into calm little interiors. The young woman who sat for him through most of these years, Henriette Darricarrere, folded herself into an armchair like this one for canvas after canvas, lit by the warm sun coming off the bay. To build each setting he hung lengths of fabric on a wooden frame behind her and set out objects he had carried home from his travels.