Flowers (Fleurs)
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Object Label
This canvas was painted one year after a critic reviewing the Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris used the term Fauves (meaning “wild beasts”) to describe similar paintings by Henri Matisse, in which bold brushwork and vivid, nonrealistic color denied any conventional perception of depth. Here, variable patches, strokes, and smudges of unblended paint, along with areas of unpainted canvas, render empty space and solid objects alike. For Matisse, such still lifes were a vehicle for exploring color, as he noted: “Construction by colored surfaces. Search for intensity of color, subject matter being unimportant. . . . Light . . . expressed by a harmony of intensely colored surfaces.”
Caption
Henri Matisse Le Cateau–Cambrésis, France, 1869 – 1954, Nice, France. Flowers (Fleurs), 1906. Oil on canvas, 21 5/8 x 18 1/8 in. (54.9 x 46 cm) frame: 2 1/8 x 26 7/16 x 22 3/4 in. (5.4 x 67.2 x 57.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Marion Gans Pomeroy, 61.243. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 61.243_color_corrected_SL1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Flowers (Fleurs)
Date
1906
Geography
Place made: France
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Dimensions
21 5/8 x 18 1/8 in. (54.9 x 46 cm) frame: 2 1/8 x 26 7/16 x 22 3/4 in. (5.4 x 67.2 x 57.8 cm)
Signatures
Signed lower right: "Henri Matisse"
Credit Line
Gift of Marion Gans Pomeroy
Accession Number
61.243
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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