Montalban, Landscape 1918

Henri Matisse made ‘Montalban, Landscape’ with paint, and probably a brush, but who knows? The colours are bold, but it’s the mark-making I find so interesting. Look at the lower left of the canvas. You can see the white house is not white, not exactly, but a dance between shades of cool blue and pure white and grey. The texture of the paint is alive and kicking. It’s thick in some places and thin in others, and you can almost feel the drag of the brush as it moves across the canvas. The dark trees in the midground are these big confident brushstrokes, and they almost look like they’re swaying in the breeze. The dark shades act as a framing device for the lighter greens and yellows of the landscape. He really pushes the boundaries of what a landscape can be, and that reminds me of Cezanne. But where Cezanne is all about structure and form, Matisse is about feeling and emotion. And that's what makes his work so exciting, that tension between the familiar and the unexpected.