Collioure 1905

Henri Matisse made this watercolor, Collioure, with what looks like pencil and brush, and it’s so light it’s almost like it was exhaled onto the paper. The lines are tentative, like he’s feeling his way around the forms. You can see the graphite under most of the color, anchoring the shapes. Everything’s kind of scrubby and washed out – in a good way. The colors are doing something similar. They aren’t trying to describe the things that are painted. More like, they're just sitting alongside of them, like different things he’s trying out, seeing what sticks. It’s a little like he's having a conversation with himself, working out what he thinks about what he sees. I love how the stripes in the middle ground just sit there, defying gravity, and how the reflections in the water are so free and loose. There’s something about the way the marks are laid down that feels so personal. He seems to have picked up where Cézanne left off and ran with it. Like a painter who's working it out as he goes along.