Puerta-ventana en Collioure

Matisse went down to Collioure on the Mediterranean in September 1914, about five weeks after France entered the war. He was 44 and had been refused for service. His mother was at Bohain in the north, behind the German line, and he had no way of reaching her.

He began this window there and left it unfinished when he went back to Paris in October. Under the wide black band that fills the middle of the canvas there is a balcony railing, painted first and then covered over, still readable in raking light. The shutter on the left keeps its slats, and the wall runs up on a slant at the bottom to give the room a floor.

He kept the picture and did not exhibit it in his lifetime. It is at the Pompidou in Paris.