O Luxo II

Matisse made two paintings of these three bathers at exactly the same large size. The first, in oil, is a loose, sketchy version. This second one, from 1907 into 1908, he painted in distemper, a chalky glue-based paint used for stage scenery, because it dries dead flat and matte with no shine to break up the broad fields of colour. That flatness is the whole idea. He has cleared away the busy, flickering brushwork of his Fauve years and left three simplified figures standing on planes of pale colour, one of them drying another after a swim. It was a deliberate step toward the calm, decorative pictures he wanted to make. A Danish collector, Johannes Rump, gave the painting to the museum in Copenhagen in 1928.