The Window

In a letter Matisse described this picture: "Through the window of the drawing room one sees the green of the garden and a black tree trunk, a basket of forget-me-nots on the table, a garden chair and a rug." First and foremost, this is a painting about light. It’s of the interior of a living room. The forms are flattened out. Look at floor near the wastebasket. The brown paintstrokes indicating the interlocking boards of a parquet floor are only way you can tell where the floor ends and the wall begins. Look at the surface of the table, tilted until it’s nearly parallel to the surface of the picture, so that the flowers, were they real, would slide right off. The chairs are just intersections of straight and curved black lines, their varying thicknesses giving them a kind of quiet energy, like in Japanese ink drawings. Matisse has simplified his objects so that they hardly look like more than sketches, and expresses his content with color. --- If you feel like we add something meaningful to your life every day and would like to help us to be better, we have created a special page where you can donate: http://support.getdailyart.com. Thank you!