Henri Matisse

Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist on March 20, 1919)
Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Paris (acquired from the above on May 20, 1931 and until at least 1949)
Sam Salz, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Michel, New York
Private Collection, Japan

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Chefs d'Oeuvre de Henri Matisse, 1958, no. 12 (titled Vase de fleurs sur une coiffeuse)
Nagoya City Art Museum, Matisse Retrospective, 1991, no. 40

Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Little Tales of Great Artists, Paris, 1949, illustrated p. 65
Massimo Carra and Mario Luzi, L'Opera di Matisse dalla Rivolta Fauve all'Intimismo, 1904-1928, Milan, 1971, no. 283, illustrated p. 98
Jack Cowart and Dominque Fourcade, Henri Matisse: The Early Years in Nice 1916-1930 (exhibition catalogue), The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, illustrated pl. 78 and p. 127 
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Matisse, vol. II, Paris, 1995, no. 270, illustrated p. 726

Le lit dans la glace is one of a remarkable series of still-lifes Matisse executed while residing at the Hôtel Méditerranée in Nice where he spent several months at a time from 1918 to 1921. The luxurious rooms, with their opulent Italianate décor bathed in Mediterranean light, and the views of the Bai des Anges provided the perfect setting for Matisse's new emphasis on ornament and patterned surfaces. He explained his fascination with the unique quality of light in a letter to fellow painter Charles Camoin: "It seems it is a paradise that one does not have the right to analyze, however one is a painter . . .Ah! Nice is a beautiful place! What a gentle and soft light in spite of its brightness . . . the objects that it touches are very colored, such as the greens for example. I have often fallen on my face.  After having written this declaration, I am looking around the room where some of my daubs are hanging, and I think I've hit it sometimes but it isn't certain" (quoted in Henri Matisse: The Early Years in Nice, 1916-1939 (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 23).

With an economy of means Matisse creates a complex organizational space which records not only the various decorative properties of the interior but also the dynamic play of light and dark permeating the room from the exterior. An elongated vase with loosely arranged flowers sits on a table with a gilded oval mirror that reflects an image of a bed. Like Cézanne, whose ceaseless use of the same objects took on a meditative quality, this mirror and table functioned as a repertory of forms appearing repeatedly either as an accoutrement of the interior, as in Intérieur à la boîte à violon (see fig. 1), or the compositional focus, as in  the present work or in Anémones au miroir noir (see fig. 2). In its many incarnations the mirror reflects the surrounding room, as it does in the present work, or displays crosshatching to suggest its reflective properties.  In other works, the mirror is mysteriously black, dramatically accentuating the luminous blossoms.  This astonishing opaque zone of black is counterbalanced by the rather gestural indication of various writing implements in rapid strokes of black paint.

Matisse credited Renoir's floral compositions (see fig. 3) as an inspiration for his still-lifes. When Matisse visited Renoir hoping to solicit a response to his new Nice work, the elderly artist immediately commented on his astounding use of black: "In all truthfulness, I don't like what you do. I'd almost like to say that you are not a good painter. . . But one thing prevents me from doing this: when you put black on the canvas it stays in its plane. All my life, I thought one couldn't use it without breaking the chromatic unity of the surface. It is a tint that I have banished from my palette. As for you, using a colored vocabulary you introduce black and it holds. So, in spite of my feeling, I think that you are most surely a painter" (ibid., p. 20).

 

Matisse's use of the still-life as vehicle to disrupt pictorial convention, foil expectations and delight with innovation, recalls Manet's late still-lifes (see fig. 4) in which flowers, casually placed in a crystal vase, gleam exquisitely against blackness. Yet, the reference to Manet extends beyond a compositional precedent as it offered a reconnection to a more promising era before World War I. Indeed, Matisse had retreated to Nice from Paris seeking refuge from the War's inexplicable destruction. The striking richness of the present work offers a luxurious space utterly independent of politics and war.

 

Fig. 1, Henri Matisse, Intérieur à la boîte à violon, winter 1918-19, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Lillie P. Bliss Collection

Fig. 2, Henri Matisse, Anémones au miroir noir, 1918-19, oil on canvas, formerly in The Reader's Digest Collection

Fig. 3, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Anémones, 1905, oil on canvas, Private Collection

Fig. 4 Edouard Manet, Roses, tulipes, et lilas dans un vase de cristal, circa, 1881, oil on canvas, Private Collection