Desnudo con bufanda blanca

Matisse painted this over a few weeks in the spring of 1909, working from a model named Loulou Brouty, who was used to his long, exacting sessions. It was a turning year for him. That same season the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin commissioned the great decorative panels of dancers and musicians that would push Matisse toward flat colour and bare, essential shapes. You can feel that pull here. The body is built from broad, confident strokes, the modelling stripped back, the white cloth doing the work a whole background once would have. He was 39, and after years of being mocked as a wild beast of colour, he was finally painting for people who understood exactly what he was after.