The Music Lesson
Henri Matisse, 1917
Image not available: work still under copyright
The Music Lesson is an oil on canvas that Henri Matisse painted in 1917. It is a family portrait showing relatives of the artist gathered around a Pleyel piano, beside a window that looks out onto Issy-les-Moulineaux. The record also lists a violin, a musical score, a cigarette and a sculpture, objects that complete the domestic atmosphere of the room.
The painting can be understood as a far more naturalistic reworking of an earlier theme. The year before, in 1916, Matisse had treated The Piano Lesson through large areas of flat colour, a flatter and more schematic version now held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1917 he returned to the same idea with a closer attention to the figures and to recognisable furniture, so that the space and the people feel more convincing.
What sets it apart is precisely the contrast between two ways of handling the same subject. Comparing it with the MoMA version shows how the artist adjusted the balance between flat colour and representation, which explains the work's interest within his development. Today it is displayed at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It is worth looking at the painting without assigning it intentions that are not documented. The figures, the piano and the light from the window are arranged in a calm, everyday space, and the viewer can notice how the objects, such as the instrument, the score and the violin, relate to the people around them.
- Painter
- Henri Matisse
- Date
- 1917
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 245 × 211 cm
- Museum
- Barnes Foundation, Merion Station
- Genre
- family portrait
- Depicts
- cigarette, sheet music, boy, woman, piano, violin, man, sculpture