Vista de Notre-Dame

Matisse painted this in the spring of 1914 from a window on the quai Saint-Michel in Paris, looking across the Seine at Notre-Dame. Studies of the surface show he began with a detailed view and then scraped it back, again and again, until almost nothing was left, just a field of blue, a few black lines for railings, and the cathedral reduced to a pale rectangle with two faint towers. Within months France was at war. The picture was so stripped-down that Matisse set it aside and did not put it on public view until 1949, 35 years later. It now belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.