La cheminée du Roi, Marseille 1918

Henri Matisse made this painting of the port in Marseille with oil on canvas. What hits me first is the immediacy of the marks, how visible the brushstrokes are, and the colors, how vivid they are, especially that sky-blue! There's a real sense of the materiality of the paint here, like you can almost feel the texture of each brushstroke. Matisse isn't trying to hide anything; he's letting the process be visible, front and center, which is just amazing. Focusing on the figures in the foreground, you can see how they are rendered with a few simple gestures, yet they convey so much about movement and the bustling life of the port. The looseness reminds me of the work of someone like Joan Mitchell, both working from observation but going straight to the feeling of the thing. Matisse always leaves us space to interpret and find our own meanings.