Henri Matisse

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris

Henri Canonne, Paris (1924)

Bignou Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner, 1936

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Henri Matisse, 1924, no. 16

London, Alex, Reid & Lefevre, Modern French Classics, 1935, no. 4

Philadephia, 19th and 20th Century French Paintings, 1936, no. 5

Matisse spent several weeks during the summers of 1920 and 1921 at Etretat, a Normandy fishing village. According to Alfred Barr, it was here, on a small expanse of beach between cliffs looking across the Channel of England, that Matisse encountered a whole new world to see and depict.

He writes, ``During the years of 1920-25 Matisse worked with unabated energy, producing scores of paintings and hundreds of drawings. The paintings are for the most part of a conveniently modest size, pleasant in subject matter and more conventionally realistic in style than anybody of work he had produced since 1904, without at the same time sacrificing decorative charm... There are many paintings in which daring combinations of patterns and (less daring) of colours are achieved with a virtuosity beyond the powers of any living artist. For many this period is the most attractive and satisfactory in Matisse's entire career.'' (Alfred Barr, Matisse, His Art and His Public, New York, 1951, p. 208)

Consistent with many other paintings from this period, Bateau à Etretat is painted with a soft palette of pale blues, reds, pinks and greens.  The boat is clearly the focal point, its bold, dark formcontrasting with the otherwise muted composition. Off in the distant right are the trademark cliffs of Etretat, clearly signalling to the viewer the location of the scene at hand. Light also serves an important role in unifying the composition, as it does in Matisse's earlier works in Nice and Paris. However as Domique Fourcade points out, ``Normandy's light would nourish his painting and be applied to the canvas in the same manner as that of Nice, but its tonality would be different simply because the natures of the two lights are not the same.'' (Jack Coward and Dominique Fourcade, Henri Matisse, The Early Years in Nice, 1916-1930, (National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue), New York, 1987, p. 51)