Young woman in Pink 1923

Henri Matisse painted this young woman in pink with oil on canvas, and right away I’m struck by how he dives straight into it. No messing! The paint is applied with this amazing directness, the colours laid down next to each other like he’s building the image brick by brick. Look at the juxtaposition of colours in the floral pattern on the wall behind the figure. Green, yellow and red. And then there are the slightly clumsy but incredibly lively brushstrokes used to model the woman’s face and hands. It’s like he is challenging the boundaries of representation. If you look at the very top of the painting on the left, the red vertical line, which grounds the figure in the composition, reminds me a little of Rothko, although this is clearly an earlier work. To me, the real magic here is how Matisse uses colour and form to evoke a feeling, a mood, rather than just describing what he sees. It’s a conversation, not a lecture.