Tulips

1914
(French, 1869–1954)
Unframed: 95.6 x 70.8 cm (37 5/8 x 27 7/8 in.)
© Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This artwork is known to be under copyright.

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Did You Know?

Matisse once wrote that he felt as though all the natural charm was lost from a bouquet of flowers picked from his garden when he arranged them.

Description

Henri Matisse, leader of the French Fauves (“Wild Beasts”), advocated the complete liberation of color from natural appearances and reducing formal elements to absolute essentials. “What I dream of,” he wrote, “is an art of balance, purity, and serenity.” In Tulips a vase of flowers floats mysteriously against fields of thinly applied turquoise, aqua, and lavender. While the colorful tulips express a joyful sentiment, the vase rests precariously on a planar shape, perhaps a tabletop. The uncertainty of the vase’s position as it extends over the edge, and whether the tabletop continues to the right through a plane of transparent color, together with the strange black rectangle in the background, inserts a contravening feeling of disquiet and visual tension into the time-honored genre of still-life painting.
Tulips

Tulips

1914

Henri Matisse

(French, 1869–1954)
France

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