La tour de Chenonceaux 1917

Matisse painted La tour de Chenonceaux, probably en plein air, with oil on canvas. The palette is muted, earthy, almost restrained compared to his later work, and it feels like he’s working through something. I love how the paint is applied in these chunky, visible strokes, you can almost feel the brush moving across the surface. It's thick, but not overworked, there is real confidence in these marks. Look at how the green ivy wraps around the tower, those little dashes of green seem like pure joy, like he found a way to translate the feeling of life into paint. This kind of building up of marks reminds me of Cézanne, that way of seeing the world not as a single, fixed image, but as a collection of impressions. I think with this painting, Matisse invites us to see the world in a more fluid, sensory way.