Femmes au canapé

After the First World War Matisse spent his winters in Nice, working in rented rooms above the Mediterranean. The hard, stripped-down painting he had done during the war gave way here to something softer: patterned rugs, a heavy divan, a window open to the light. This is one of a group of interiors he built around a woman resting on a couch. The sofa sits at an angle across a red chequered floor, and Matisse repainted it more than once to get the tilt he wanted. Warm reds and cool greens are balanced against each other across the room, and the eye is led past the two figures toward the bright gap of the window. Paul Guillaume, the Paris dealer whose collection now fills much of this museum, bought the canvas in 1924.