Nature morte c. 1918

Henri Matisse made this still life, ‘Nature morte’ with oil paint on canvas, and you can really tell that the artmaking process was all about feeling and intuition. The surface is alive! Look at the white of the garlic, it's almost sculptural in its thickness. The paint is like frosting, clinging to the canvas. It’s so delicious and rich, I can imagine the artist really having fun with it. The way the brushstrokes define the form of the peach, with quick, confident marks, gives me the impression of the fruit's softness. It's like he's capturing the essence of each object with just a few well-placed dabs of paint. I'm reminded of Van Gogh, in how he could use paint to express emotion. This is about more than just representation; it's about feeling the world and translating that onto canvas. With a modern eye, the roughness and the ambiguity feels very contemporary.