Donna su una terrazza

Matisse painted this in the summer of 1907 at Collioure, the little fishing port on the French Mediterranean where he had worked through the wild colour experiments of the previous few years. The woman on the terrace is his wife, Amélie. By now he was pushing even past that, stripping the scene down to broad flat planes of colour held together by a strong drawn line, so a body and a balcony become almost a pattern. This was the year Picasso was finishing his Demoiselles in Paris, and the two men were starting to circle each other as rivals. Russian collectors were soon buying Matisse in bulk, which is how so many of his pictures from these years ended up in Russia.