Woman with a hat
Henri Matisse, 1905
Image not available: work still under copyright
Woman with a Hat is a half-length portrait of Amélie Matisse, the artist's wife, seated and wearing a fanciful hat while holding an ornate fan. Matisse painted it in 1905 during a stay in the south of France, as part of a series he produced between May and September of that year. Its size, format, pose and dress could suggest a society portrait, yet its painterly treatment moves decisively away from that tradition. The face is built from bold, unnatural colours and swirling brushstrokes, and a green line running down it marks the transition between light and shadow. The same vibrant colour leads the eye to the gloved hand and the fan, while the hat departs entirely from any faithful reflection of reality. The background is largely ambiguous, so it is hard to determine where the chair stands or what setting the picture depicts.
The painting marks a turning point in Matisse's development. Until then he had worked with divisionist brushwork; here he abandoned a single technique and adopted a mixed approach, starting from a rough sketch and filling the canvas with contrasting strokes of colour rather than defined forms. Together with André Derain, with whom he shared the idea of treating colour as a material on a par with stone or wood, Matisse helped launch what became known as Fauvism. When the work was shown at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, alongside pieces by Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and others, its loose handling and unreal colours caused a considerable scandal. Some visitors dismissed it as childish or even a sign of madness. Even so, it drew more visitors than almost any other work in that salon.
The hostile reception did not stop him. Gertrude and Leo Stein bought the painting, and it later passed to the Haas family in San Francisco. In 1990 Elise S. Haas bequeathed it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where it remains today.
- Painter
- Henri Matisse
- Date
- 1905
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 80 × 60 cm
- Museum
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
- Movement
- Fauvism
- Genre
- portrait
- Depicts
- hand fan, woman, Amélie Parayre, hat