Corsica, il vecchio mulino

Early in 1898, newly married, Matisse took his wife south to Corsica, his first time on the Mediterranean, and by his own account it changed everything. They stayed about six months near Ajaccio, and the southern sun hit him like a discovery. This small view of an old mill is one of the pictures that came from it, its greens and reds laid down in quick, spotted strokes, far brighter than anything he had painted in grey Paris. Fauvism, the movement of raw colour he would help lead, was still seven years off. He said ever after that those Corsican months were when he understood that colour itself could be a subject. The canvas is small, not much larger than a sheet of paper.