Luxe, Calme et Volupté
Henri Matisse, 1904
Image not available: work still under copyright
Luxe, Calme et Volupté is an oil on canvas that Henri Matisse painted in 1904 and that now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Its title borrows a line from Charles Baudelaire's poem L'Invitation au voyage, from Les Fleurs du mal, a verse evoking a world of order, beauty and pleasure. Matisse does not illustrate the poem, and the picture has no real narrative connection to it; the title works more as a mood than as a storyline.
The scene shows several figures on a Mediterranean shore near the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, where Matisse had spent a summer working alongside the Neo-Impressionists Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross. The figures sit or stand in a calm, loosely arranged composition, beneath pines and low hills, with a nude woman and clothed companions. Simple objects such as fruit, a plate and a boat add to the sense of leisure.
The most striking feature is the handling of paint. Matisse takes up the divisionist method promoted by Signac, building forms from short, regular strokes of colour that blend when seen from a distance. Yet the colour no longer follows what the eye sees; it is chosen subjectively, and the drawing is simplified. This combination startled viewers when the work was shown at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905. The picture is often regarded as a starting point of Fauvism, the movement Matisse would lead in the years that followed.
Signac bought the painting, which ties it to the circle of Neo-Impressionism. Today it is seen as a work of transition: it keeps the language of the previous generation while opening the way to a freer, more expressive use of colour.
- Painter
- Henri Matisse
- Date
- 1904
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 98 × 118 cm
- Museum
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Movement
- pointillism
- Genre
- allegory, nude
- Depicts
- sitting, Gulf of Saint-Tropez, dress, Pierre Matisse, hairstyle, fruit, boat, woman