When Henri Matisse came to Philadelphia

Philadelphia Museum of Art witnessed a 19-day strike by its staff in September-October. (Photo: Artnet/Twitter)

In recent news, climate activists have been targeting art by masters to generate attention — tomato soup on a Van Gogh painting in London, mashed potatoes on a Claude Monet painting in Potsdam, Germany. In a very different way, at Philadelphia, the striking union workers of the Philadelphia Museum of Art took the help of Henri Matisse’s paintings to negotiate a favourable deal for themselves.

For weeks, the striking workers picketed the northern entrance of the museum with chants, one of them going "No contract, No Matisse". "No Matisse" referred to the grand show "Matisse in the 1930s", a major curatorial achievement of the museum after a seven-year partnership with two French museums: Musée de l’Orangerie (Paris) and Musée Matisse (Nice). Just a week before the exhibition opening scheduled on October 19, the management offered a deal that was favourable to the workers.

Matisse the artist

Matisse's 'Interior with Etruscan Vase' (1940)

The grand exhibition focusses on a transformative decade of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, Henri Matisse (1869–1964). He was a late-blooming artist and at the age of 20, he had never even considered a career as an artist. By the time he died, the artist had a vast oeuvre encompassing painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic arts: etching, linocuts, lithographs, aquatints, paper cutouts; and book illustrations. He went through all the "isms" — Realism, Neoclassicism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Pointillism dots and daubs, and later, his paintings with bright colours and energetic brushwork was dubbed as Fauvism (from the French word fauve, which means wild beast). But he went through every vocabulary in art, dropping them and then reinventing them over and over again. Yet, unlike Picasso, with whom he was constantly compared, Matisse slowly and carefully acquired the rudiments of his craft.

An artist is born

Henri Matisse's 'Woman with a Veil' (1927)

Matisse was born in 1869 at Le Cateau-Cambrésis in Picardy where the land is flat and the sky is often grey and gloomy, not unlike the landscapes of his early paintings. Because of poor health and appendicitis (which couldn’t be operated in those days), his father sent him to work as a clerk in a solicitor’s office. Bored out of his wits, Matisse decided to study law in Paris in 1887 and during his study period, he didn’t even visit the Louvre. Back in Picardy after his studies, he continued as a clerk in a law office. In 1889, a severe bout of appendicitis forced him into bedrest at his parents’ home for several months. A neighbour suggested that he paint a chromolithograph — similar to a painting by numbers but less mechanical and came with a canvas (usually a landscape) and a paintbox — which Matisse’s mother bought for him. He did two small chromos and then signed his name in reverse — ESSITAM.

Matisse's Papeete – Tahiti (Window in Tahiti), 1935

That was a turning point. He wrote of his experience: “I was filled with indifference to everything that people wanted me to do. But the moment I had this box of colours in my hands, I had the feeling that my life was there.” Soon, Matisse got deeply involved in painting, painting even at work, in fact, one of his early still lifes is of law books. After heated arguments with his father, he turned to art full-time, going to Paris once again, this time to get into an art school, which his father had said should only be École des Beaux-Arts. Finally, after working in the studio of Gustave Moreau and then succeeding in getting into the art school, Matisse was on his own as an artist.

Matisse's The Green Blouse (1936)

There are several phases in his long career as an artist; 1908-13 were on art and decoration, mural commissions and studio interiors (L'Atelier Rouge/The Red Studio, 1911). Later, came four years of experimenting on Cubism and near abstraction. In 1917, Matisse travelled to Nice and soon settled down there. Till 1930, he did, what is called the early Nice period, female figures, sometimes odalisque dressed (a popular painting of reclining women in a harem setting).

Matisse in the 1930s

Matisse's Odalisque in a Black Armchair (1942)

The exhibition "Matisse in the 1930s" is from the time when the artist stopped painting easel pictures temporarily, flayed by second thoughts about his work. According to the catalogue, the turning point came in the fall of 1930, when the artist visited the Barnes Foundation, then in a suburb of the city, and received the commission for a three-part mural, The Dance (1931-32). After this commission, Matisse started using photography to document work process, pre-coloured cut papers to plan compositions; the latter giving a style of flat tones and bold shapes, and a style which he continued till the end of his life.

The Mural at the Barnes Foundation

Matisse's 11-ft drawing at the scale of the central figure of the Barnes mural (1930-31)

So, essentially, the "start" for this exhibition comes from the imposing murals which is housed at the Barnes, close to the museum. The making of the mural, the plethora of studies for it in pencil, gouache and oil, including the nearly 11ft-tall ink drawing at the scale of the central figure of Barnes mural (1930-31) and a short film showing Matisse at work in a rented garage in Nice as his dog Raudi bounds about, are all on display at this important section of the exhibition. At the nearby Barnes Foundation, there is some vexed correspondence between Matisse and Dr Albert Barnes, about the measurements being wrong, one year after Matisse had started to work on the canvases. When it was finally installed at Barnes, it was more than two years since the commission was given, and there are anecdotes of Matisse travelling with the works and putting them up, frictions about how the canvasses had to be stretched and his dismay about artworks to be hung below the mural. In fact, the two works displayed are paintings done by Matisse and Picasso. Around the time the mural was being done, Matisse undertook another commission from a Swiss publisher for an illustrated volume of poems by Stéphane Mallarmé. Some of these illustrations are on display at the same gallery.

The before and after

Matisse's The Song (Le Chant), 1938

Within the halls of the exhibition, there is a prelude to the '30s phase, Interiors and Odalisques, the Nice period, where the women occupy the canvases, suffused with decorative and colourful textiles, headdresses and so on. The compositions are ravishing; breathtaking. The women lean over, recline, and sit with complete abandon and confidence. They occupy almost all of the canvases, yet the space in the front and back flattens, moves, recedes and, sometimes, breaks into geometric patterns.

Then there are The Artist and His Model (1919) and the working in the studio sections following his oeuvre in the '30s and a bit of the following decade. The narrative of the exhibition ends with the drawings he did post his abdominal surgery in 1941, "Themes and Variations", a complete set of drawings of models and fruit and floral still life.

What makes the exhibition special?

In a digital world, where every bit of information on Matisse is available, this standalone exhibition gives the viewers an opportunity to look at him as an artist going through a creative slump, and then propelling his career onto a new path once again. However, nothing prepares one from the impact of seeing a Matisse up, close and personal.