The Red Blouse 1936

Henri Matisse captured a seated woman in oil paint, sometime in the mid-1930s. Look at the chromatic intensity of the complementary reds and greens, and how they are arranged to vibrate against each other. I can just imagine him, deciding to paint the ruffled blouse a searing shade of red, then adding a choker and bracelets of leafy greens, and following that up with a flash of chartreuse in the sitter’s hair! There’s a tension between the flatness of the picture plane and the depth created by the bold juxtapositions of color. This gives the portrait its vitality, and makes the sitter feel so present. It also has a slightly unsettled quality - is the man in the background a reflection? A painting? I think that tension might be exactly what Matisse was after. The painting has a fresh, modern feel, but it's also part of a long conversation with artists like Ingres and Renoir. Painters are always building on what has come before. This painting shows us that color can be both decorative and expressive, and that a portrait can be both a likeness and an invention.