Woman With the Hat by Henri Matisse PDF

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This is an essay about a painting called "Woman with the Hat" by Henri Matisse. This is an analysis of painting....

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Woman With the Hat by Henri Matisse Henri Emile Benoit Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, as the first son of a middle-class seed trader in the Le Cateau-Cambrésis region of Northern France. He was a revolutionary artist who influenced 20th-century artists with the Fauvist style. Matisse was originally trained to become a lawyer and he was working in a law office as a lawyer until 1889. However, in 1889, after he had an appendicitis operation, Matisse discovered his passion to the art of painting through the painting materials that her mother gave as a means of spending time in the long recovery process. After he recovered, he realized that painting was a passion for him and it was hard for him to give up painting. So, he started taking drawing classes and kept painting during his lunch breaks. In 1891, Matisse moved to Paris to study art and followed the traditional nineteenth-century path, first at the Académie Julian, and then at the École des Beaux-Arts. Magdalena Dabrowski, the associate curator in the Department of Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, states that “Matisse’s early work, which he began exhibiting in 1895, was informed by the dry academic manner, particularly evident in his drawing. Discovering manifold artistic movements that coexisted or succeeded one another on the dynamic Parisian artistic scene, such as Neoclassicism, Realism, Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism, he began to experiment with a diversity of styles, employing new kinds of brushwork, light, and composition to create his own pictorial language (par. 2).” Before Matisse discovered the beauty of bright colors while he was visiting Signac at Saint-Tropez and started using brighter colors, his techniques and colors were influenced by Manet and Cezanne. Then, because he was living in nearby Lavandou, he tried the pointillist

technique of small color dots in complementary colors. Matisse loved different ideas and it led him to try new techniques. So, when he visited Collioure, he found out a new technique. Dabrowski mentions his new style as “Matisse created brilliantly colored canvases structured by color applied in a variety of brushwork, ranging from thick impasto to flat areas of pure pigment, sometimes accompanied by a sinuous, arabesque-like line (par. 3). Artworks, for example, “Woman with a Hat” when displayed at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, offered rise to the first of the innovator developments, named "Fauvism" by an art critic, referring to a movement in painting characterized by vivid colors, free treatment of form, and a resulting vibrant and decorative effect. Woman with a Hat (Femme au chapeau) was a oil painting portrait of Matisse’s wife, Amelie Parayre. The painting was in the middle of the dispute which led Fauvism, first modern art movement of the twentieth century, to rise. Sabine Rewald states that “The Fauve painters were the first to break with Impressionism as well as with older, traditional methods of perception. Their spontaneous, often subjective response to nature was expressed in bold, undisguised brushstrokes and high-keyed, vibrant colors directly from the tube (par. 1).” Matisse and Derain started using unnaturalistic colors and vivid brushstrokes in their paintings. When the painting called “Woman with a Hat” exhibited by Matisse in the Salon d’Automne in Paris, Louis Vauxcelles, who is a well-known art critic, called them “Fauves” which means wild beasts in the magazine called Gil Blas. After that, artists who follow fauvism liked that name and started using it. One of the most well-known paintings by Matisse, Woman with a Hat, depicts Henri’s wife, Amelie. The painting is currently being exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The painting is known for the use of unconventional colors and shape for portrayal of Amelie’s

face. With this artwork, Matisse showed new ways of coloring to the world. The Woman With a Hat marked a complex change from regular brushstrokes of Matisse’s other works to a more expressive style. Because he used non-naturalistic colors and loose brushstrokes, it seemed like sketchy or "unfinished" quality, the viewers of the day were shocked. T.J. Clark states that “Journalists soon decided that Matisse’s painting was scandalous, and the public turned up in droves to make fun of it. So far so predictable: the script was forty years old. But on 15 November something unusual happened. Two paragraphs of real and vehement criticism appeared in the Symbolist journal L’Hermitage, signed by the painter-critic Maurice Denis. Ever since, they have haunted our picture of 20th-century art (par. 1).” Matisse’s Woman with a Hat combines pointillist color with post impressionistic technique and it is a revolutionary artwork that challenged the way art was viewed by the critics and the viewers. Madame Matisse posed for this half-length portrait in the painting. She is portrayed in an intricate outfit with attributes of the French bourgeoisie: a gloved arm holding a fan and an elaborate hat perched atop her head. Her costume's vibrant hues are expressive, however; when asked about the shade of the dress Madame Matisse was actually wearing when she posed for the portrait, it was different than expected. Clark also mentions a story about the painting process of artwork as: “The German painter Hans Purrmann, looking back later to his days as Matisse’s pupil and ally, tells the story of Matisse’s studio colleagues asking the painter ‘what kind of hat and what kind of dress were they that this woman had been wearing which were so incredibly loud in colour. And Matisse, exasperated, answered “Black, obviously” (par.4).” Best comparison to Matisse’s Woman With a Hat is painting called Lady in Blue by Cezanne, which was painted 5 years earlier than Woman With a Hat was painted. The artwork by

Cezanne is also a oil painting as Matisse’s work. Both artists painted their wives but in the different style. While Matisse was under pressure of Fauvism, Cezanne was a Post-Impressionist painter at that time. Clark compares both artists paintings as “Cézanne, of course, was his touchstone. It is as if Woman with a Hat began as an imagining of Cézanne’s Woman in Blue abruptly stirring from her armoured, downcast immobility and swivelling to meet the viewer’s gaze; so that the blue of Woman in Blue’s costume – which is really more negative, more deeply inhuman and inorganic even than Baudelaire’s black – leaps into coloured flame. Constraint and uneasiness are still the order of the day in Matisse, but they no longer hold the main character in a vice. Maybe there was a little too much Death in Woman in Blue for Matisse’s taste – it is easy to imagine Cézanne’s sitter contemplating a skull – and not enough of Fashion (par. 7).” The most important fact that makes those two paintings similar is that Matisse was inspired by the art of Cezanne. After following and being influenced by many art forms and styles, Matisse was also influenced by Post-Impressionist Cezanne and Signac with the art technique known as Pointillism. Anirudh states that “Matisse later said, “In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most.” (par. 3).” In conclusion, Matisse was a great artist who loved trying new ideas and painting with passion. He once said,  “A good art work should be like an armchair in which you could relax at the end of the day”. He knew that artist’s artworks must be in balance and must avoid troubling people with depressing feelings. He wanted people to enjoy and feel alive with art so he used vibrant colours on his paintings. Philips mentions that Matisse once said “I didn’t expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I’m living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without

looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions. (par. 4).”

Works Cited:

Anirudh, Learnodo.  “Henri Matisse 10 Facts on The Famous French Artist.” Learnodo  Newtonic. h ttps://learnodo-newtonic.com/henri-matisse-facts. 4 Nov 2016

Clark, T. J. "Madame Matisse’s Hat." London Review of Books 30.16 (2008): 29-32.  31 May 2018 . Dabrowski, Magdalena. “Henri Matisse (1869–1954).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mati/hd_mati.htm (October 2004) Philips, Renee. “Henri Matisse and The Healing Power of Art.” The Healing Power of Art and Artists. 2 March 2015. https://www.healing-power-of-art.org/henri-matisse-and-the-healing-power-of-art/ Rewald, Sabine. “Fauvism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm (October 2004)

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