The Green Stripe
Henri Matisse, 1905
Image not available: work still under copyright
The Green Stripe (La Raie verte), also known as Madame Matisse, is an oil painting Henri Matisse made in 1905 of his wife, Amélie Parayre. It shows the sitter from the bust up, and colour takes precedence over any attempt at naturalistic description. Her face is built from flat zones of pink, orange, yellow and deep blue: one side receives direct light, the other sits in half-light, and shadows and contours are suggested by patches of colour rather than modelling. Her orange and pink blouse with a teal neckline and the background divided between warm and cool tones complete an arrangement of bold, unnatural blocks.
The most discussed feature is the vertical green band running from the hairline down the nose to the upper lip, splitting the face in two, and it gives the picture its title. Matisse was not recording a real shadow. As he himself argued, green does not mean grass nor blue mean sky; the relationship between colours is what opens an illusory space in the viewer's mind.
The work grew out of the summer of 1905 that Matisse and André Derain spent at Collioure, where they tested colours that departed from the appearance of their subjects. It was shown at the Salon d'Automne that year alongside Derain, Marquet and Vlaminck, and critics dubbed the group les fauves, or wild beasts, a label that gave the movement its name. That is why the painting is regarded as a landmark of Fauvism.
The portrait also unsettled its first viewers. Compared with other images of Amélie from the same period, it feels more serious and withdrawn, and the sitter appears almost mask-like and detached. One contemporary called it a demented caricature of a portrait, and it has been suggested that strains in the couple's marriage may have contributed to its impersonal character. It is now held by the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
- Painter
- Henri Matisse
- Date
- 1905
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 40 × 32 cm
- Museum
- Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen Municipality
- Movement
- Fauvism
- Genre
- portrait
- Depicts
- hairstyle, face, Amélie Parayre