Promenade parmi les oliviers

In the summer of 1905 Matisse took his family to Collioure, a fishing port on the Mediterranean close to the Spanish border, and asked André Derain, a painter 11 years younger, to come down and join him. They worked outdoors there for about two months, and what they carried back to Paris that autumn was the loudest painting either of them had made. This is an olive grove from those weeks. The path running up the middle is pink, the shadows in the grass are blue and violet, and bare canvas is left showing between the strokes, which is what gives the surface its flicker. The picture belonged to Michael and Sarah Stein, the American couple whose flat on the rue Madame in Paris held the largest collection of Matisse anywhere at the time, open to visitors on Saturday evenings.