Pont Saint-Michel
Henri MATISSE
(French, 1869-1954)
Pont Saint-Michel
Dateca. 1901
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionsoverall: 23 3/4 x 28 3/4 in. (60.3 x 73 cm)
frame: 31 3/8 x 36 x 1 1/2 in. (79.7 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Bequest of Wright S. Ludington
Object number1993.1.5
Subject(s)
- river
- architecture
- boat
Collection
- 20th century French
- European
Sub-Collection(s)
- French
On View
On viewCollections
Label TextIn emulation of Monet’s and Pissarro’s work in series, Matisse painted multiple canvases from the window of his fifth-floor apartment, overlooking the Seine. This painting, with its radical simplification of forms and luminous palette, shows the artist’s rapid development away from the more traditional techniques he had absorbed as an art student and towards the radical solutions he admired in the art of Cézanne, van Gogh, and Rodin. The heightened palette and flattened decorative surface of this landscape would soon give way to an even more lurid and fantastical use of color in the coming years, culminating in the artist’s breakthrough Fauve (“wild beast”) years (1904-1906).
