 |
The most glorious sequence in the ensemble of Fauve paintings is formed by the works of the leader of the movement: fifty-three canvasses by Matisse. Few of these, it is true, come from his Fauve period; they are spread over the whole of his career prior to 1914. They were brought together by the two great collectors. Shchukin bought his first Matisses probably as early as 1904, after having noticed them in the Salons; they were relatively dark pictures, still lifes and landscapes painted between 1900 and 1902.
In 1906, he met the painter; soon after, he bought from him several Fauve paintings. From 1908 onward, the quality and the rate of his acquisitions made him, until 1914, Matisse's chief patron; he amassed thirty-seven canvasses. Most of them were placed en masse in one of his large drawing rooms, while the celebrated decorative panels, Dance and Music, were hung in the staircase of the palace. Morosov, encouraged by Shchukin's example, had, by 1908, bought several of Matisse's dark still lifes. In that year he was introduced to the artist by his friend.
The new patron was soon in competition with the first one: in 1912 Morosov bought several major canvasses from the Moroccan period, and, by the beginning of the war, in 1914, he owned a dozen of Matisse's works. It will be readily seen that no knowledge of the art of Matisse is possible without acquiantance with this prodigious collection. As Alfred Barr, to whom we owe these historical details, points out, the two Russian collectors, together with a few other art lovers among whom the role of Frenchmen was but a modest one, ranked much higher than the art dealers in their support of the artist and that at a period in his career when his stature was far from recognized.
The works which precede the Fauve manner are remarkably varied and numerous. They are still lifes dating from the period 1896-1902. The Bottle of Schiedam, which carries the first of these dates, is still marked by the influence of Chardin whom Matisse greatly admired; at the same time, the opposition of reds and bright yellows to the ashy grays of the shadows recalls Fantin-Latour. The still lifes which come next depart from this traditional composition. The perspective tends to be a plunging one, the treatment of light and forms becomes distinctly Impressionist, influenced by Monet and Pissarro.
Such are the Blue Bowl and Fruit which must date from 1897 (given its affinity with the celebrated Dinner Table [La Desserte] until recently in the Edward G. Robinson collection) and the Crockery and Fruit Dish, which is slightly later in date. In the Blue Jug, the Tureen and Coffee Pot, and the Crockery and Fruit, the influence of Ceézanne engenders a pronounced plasticity; the picture has a very limited depth, the onlooker finds himself very dose to the objects represented and the background is strictly vertical and divided into abstract zones of color. Two landscapes indicate the same orientation: the Cézannian Bois de Boulogne ( 1902), and the Luxembourg Gardens ( 1905?) in which curvilinear arabesques and mauve and red masses of trees show a clear filiation with Gauguin and announce a radical change of vision.
 The change appears fully in the Landscape in Collioure, painted in 1906, a picture of surprising brightness, spotted with carmine, pink, blue, mauve, pale green, all put down in separate strokes or spread out transparently on the canvas which has remained partly uncovered, as in a water color. Matisse draws from the divisionisni of Signac an unexpected lesson: he reveals to us a world radiant with light, mobile, weightless, almost disjointed, differing as much from that of the Impressionists as from that of the followers of Seurat. Spontaneous joy of color, youth, and freedom of the eye-this is the essential conquest of Fauvism, achieved a year before, precisely in Collioure. The principles of a new aesthetic have been laid down; Matisse shares them with Derain and Vlaminck. He will draw from them capital and durable conclusions but will not dwell on them himself. Matisse's great spiritual richness, his parallel or contradictory researches produced simultaneously paintings very different from each other. Thus, from the same year 1906 dates the superb Seated Nude, with its powerful black outlines, its mauve and pink flesh against a background of pale blue-green. Already in the previous year Matisse had painted the same model as a vigorous nude called Black and Gold which was bought by Shchukin; he also produced a brighter version in which next to the figure a blue drapery lies on a chair.
These nudes reflect Matisse's new interests: it is the period in which he is also busy as a sculptor. The nude in Black and Gold is modeled with vehemence and its ardent color goes hand in hand with its brutal relief. The brighter version with its pink flesh and a pale background tinted with blue and ocher is, on the contrary, relaxed in its drawing. The Seated Nude brings these chromatic elements to an even colder brightness, a more serene luminosity to which correspond a suppler modeling and more curvilinear, more flowing outlines. This intimate link between the spirit of form and the ambiente of color will be one of the basic rules of the plastic poetry of Matisse.
Matisse abandoned Fauvism at the end of two years, but the freedom of color and its essentially Mediterranean brightness confirmed his nascent passion for Arab art. He very probably saw the great exhibition of Islamic art at the Pavillon de Marsan in 1903, and his Joy of Life, a capital work in the Fauve manner, executed at the end of 1905 or the beginning of 1906, shows these blurred arabesques which are so characteristic of oriental pottery. In the spring of 1906 he went to stay in Biskra, bringing back with him pottery and textiles which were to appear in his paintings for several years.
|
