Henri Matisse: “The Window”, France 1916

Henri Matisse: “The Window”, France 1916 Matisse is considered one of the most influential painters of the 20th century, and one of the leading Modernists. Known for his use of vibrant colors and simple forms, Matisse helped to usher in a new approach to art. He believed that the artist must be guided by instinct and intuition. Although he began his craft later in life than most artists, Matisse continued to create and innovate well into his eighties. The Window, 1916, is a very pretty piece of work. Henri Matisse uses jagged, thick, curved, heavy, graceful, vertical, diagonal, and straight lines to portray this painting. With the perfect use of these lines, Henri Matisse created many shapes to piece this amazing painting together: circles, squares, curved, soft-edged, and hard-edged shapes. As a result of his lines and shapes, he gives the painting a smooth, soft, and dull texture which is a very nice combination in this painting. The painting contains a bit of asymmetry, which is when each side of the painting is a little different but looks relatively the same. At first sight of the painting your eye will focus on the focal point, which is a reddish orange table in the middle of the picture. In the painting, apart from the table, you can see a room with a blue and black chair, a rug, and a window. Through the window you can see the green of a garden and a black tree trunk, there is also a basket of forget-me-nots on the table. This gives the painting a very shallow space feeling, which is when you cannot see very far past the main object. On this painting the table with flowers, the chair, and the rug which they are sitting on have the most detail and, in my opinion, it looks very lonely. The artist uses a mix of dark blue shading and beams of light coming through the window to express emotion. The name of this piece of art “The Window” does not, but at the same time does, in my opinion, represent its true meaning for two reasons. First, when I think of a