Portrait Of Belivscqua 1903

Henri Matisse painted this oil portrait, "Portrait of Belivscqua," and you can almost feel him pushing the paint around the canvas, can't you? It's like he's building up the face with these juicy, buttery strokes. Look at the way the colors mix in the beard – that dark, almost navy blue, smudged and blended with touches of green and grey. You can see how each dab and smear carries its own weight, building depth and texture. There's a real physicality to it, a sense of the artist grappling with the medium, like a sculptor working with clay. It's almost like a raw, immediate impression of a person, caught in a fleeting moment. Matisse’s later works, those bright, bold cut-outs, feel miles away from this, but you can see him here, in the making. It reminds me of Van Gogh too, in the way he loads the paint and isn’t afraid to leave the evidence of his process right there on the surface. Art is never really finished, is it? It's an ongoing conversation.