La Leçon de musique

By 1917 the war had pulled Matisse's world tight around the family house at Issy, just outside Paris, and he painted nearly everyone in it here. His daughter Marguerite stands with young Pierre at the piano, his older son Jean sits reading and smoking at the left, and his wife Amélie is out in the garden, glimpsed through the tall window as if the lawn were another room. Matisse himself stays out of the picture, present only through his violin, laid on the piano, since he was a keen amateur player. He'd painted this same room the year before in flat blocks of colour, the version now in New York. Here he lets the family and their quiet evening back in.