The Dance
Henri Matisse, 1932
Image not available: work still under copyright
The Dance is a mural by Henri Matisse painted in 1932 on canvas, made up of three panels of large format and very elongated proportions. Its subject is dance and the figure of the nymph, treated allegorically rather than as a specific narrative. The figures move in a circular rhythm that fills the surface of the work.
The commission came from Albert C. Barnes, a collector and admirer of Matisse whom he had met in the United States. The mural was meant to sit above the three arches that frame the windows of the main hall of his gallery. Matisse chose to paint it in Nice, on canvases Barnes supplied, rather than working on site. It was an unusual method for such a work, but the patron had given him complete artistic freedom.
The process took far longer than planned: what was expected to last a year stretched to two, and Matisse came out of it physically and emotionally exhausted. On installation he also learned, to his disappointment, that Barnes did not intend to show the work to the public. Even so, he was pleased with the result. In a 1933 letter to his son he described the effect of light across the ceiling and vaults, and said that once the canvas was in place it seemed to detach from him and become part of the building.
Some commentators regard this project as pivotal in bringing Matisse back to the essential sources of his art: simplicity, flattened form, emphasis on colour and the use of paper cut-outs, all of which would play an important part in his later work.
The mural has also been the subject of controversy: in 1993, at a hearing in Pennsylvania, the art conservator Paul R. Himmelstein argued that it had suffered significant damage during a world tour of highlights from the Barnes collection.
- Painter
- Henri Matisse
- Date
- 1932
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 356 × 1300 cm
- Museum
- Barnes Foundation, Merion Station
- Movement
- modernism
- Genre
- allegory
- Depicts
- dance, nymph