Mujer leyendo

Matisse painted this in 1895, years before the wild colour that made his name, when he was still a young student working in muted browns and greys. A woman in black sits with her back to us, reading in a crowded little room, and the whole thing is quiet and dim. What matters is what happened next: shown at a Paris salon in 1896, it became the first work Matisse ever sold to the French state, bought on behalf of the wife of the President of the Republic. Look at the upper left and you can find a small framed drawing on the wall, a self-portrait he slipped in. It hangs today in the town where he was born, Le Cateau-Cambresis.