The present work was executed in 1917 in Malabry, a town close to Henri Matisse’s family home at Issy-Les-Moulineaux, south-west of Paris. Towards the end of the First World War, Matisse settled in Nice for the winter and returned to the outskirts of Paris for the summer. With the recent purchase of an automobile, Matisse was able to easily explore the surrounding landscape and travel with his easel, paints and brushes to the neighboring forests to paint en plein air. The new-found ease of access facilitated a return to the subject matter of landscapes, which became a source of both inspiration and solace for Matisse during and immediately after the war years.

Fig. 1 André Derain, L'Estaque, oil on canvas, 1905, The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Matisse’s reinvigorated awareness of landscape painting was an expression of his renewed interest in Impressionism and its revolutionary approach to subject matter at the time. Matisse drew inspiration from the practice of painting en plein air and the sense of immediacy it provided to create a more direct depiction of his surroundings. He combined this with the lessons he had learnt from his time as a Fauve artist where formal colour no longer adhered to its naturalistic application but represented a spontaneous and emotional response to the
surroundings.

Fig. 2 Henri Matisse, Paysage, oil on canvasboard, 1918, The Museum of Modern Art, New York  © SUCCESSION H. MATISSE/ DACS 2024  

The high intensity colouration and paint application of Fauve canvases (fig. 1) is in sharp contrast to the lush, verdant landscapes of Matisse's work from this period. In compositions like the present work or the related Paysage (fig. 2), trunks and branches are made of solitary swooping brushstrokes and the undergrowth by wet staccato dabs of the brush. Yet, the confluence of these two inspirations mark a new phase in Matisse’s progression as an artist and the present work is a wonderful testament to this. Matisse commented on this: “I worked in the Impressionist manner, directly from nature, and later I strove for concentration, for a more intense expression with line as well as colour. So I was, of course, obliged in part to sacrifice other values, materials, spatial depth, and richness of detail. Now I want to bring all of this together…” (quoted in P. Schneider, Matisse, London, 1984, p. 507).

Fig. 3 Paul Cézanne, Paysage des environs d'Aix (la plaine de l'Arc), 1892-95, oil on canvas, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

This shift is clearly recognisable in Le Carrefour de Malabry which shows awareness of Cézanne and his undisputed impact on perspectival landscape painting (fig. 3). Here flat surfaces are juxtaposed against the overall depth of the composition. As Pierre Schneider observed, “The difficulty was that a return to realistic representation was at once necessary and impossible. Unless—and this was the solution Matisse was looking for—the abstract image could be made to look like a realistic representation…Matisse was no longer satisfied with merely combining the two-and three-dimensional systems: he now wanted two-dimensional space to create effects which had so far been produced by three-dimensional space. It was no longer a question of skilfully combining realism with abstraction, but of getting abstraction to simulate realism” (ibid., p. 508).

Fig. 4, Henri Matisse in his studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux, 1913