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Lot Essay
The present work was painted in 1923, only a few years into Matisse’s life-long love affair with the city of Nice on the Côte d’Azur. After another cold and dismal winter in wartime Paris, Matisse decided in October 1917 that this was more than he could bear, and so he traveled south to the sunny Midi, stopping first at Marseille and then nearby L'Estaque, where he and Albert Marquet had painted two years before. In mid-December he moved on to Nice, a city he had not previously visited. "I left L'Estaque because of the wind, and I had caught bronchitis there,” the artist later recounted. “I came to Nice to cure it, and it rained for a month. Finally I decided to leave. The next day the mistral chased the clouds away and it was beautiful. I decided not to leave Nice, and have stayed there practically the rest of my life" (quoted in J. Cowart, Matisse: The Early Years in Nice, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 19).
Matisse thereafter returned to Nice each winter, spending extended periods of time during each visit, before becoming a virtual permanent resident during his fifth sojourn in 1921-1922. In contrast to the often gray and variable light of the north, the artist delighted in the Mediterranean light during the winter; although it was less dazzling than in the summer, it created a subtler spectrum of colors. “Most people come here for the light and the picturesque quality,” the artist later explained. “As for me, I come from the north. What made me stay are the great colored reflections of January, the luminosity of daylight.” To the painter Charles Camoin, Matisse wrote in May 1918, "High noon is superb but frightening... A little while ago I took a nap underneath an olive tree and what I saw was of a color and softness of relationships that was truly moving. It seems as though it is a paradise that one does not have the right to analyze, however, one is a painter, God damn it. Ah! Nice is a beautiful place! What a gentle and soft light in spite of its brightness!" (ibid., pp. 19 and 23).
Matisse thereafter returned to Nice each winter, spending extended periods of time during each visit, before becoming a virtual permanent resident during his fifth sojourn in 1921-1922. In contrast to the often gray and variable light of the north, the artist delighted in the Mediterranean light during the winter; although it was less dazzling than in the summer, it created a subtler spectrum of colors. “Most people come here for the light and the picturesque quality,” the artist later explained. “As for me, I come from the north. What made me stay are the great colored reflections of January, the luminosity of daylight.” To the painter Charles Camoin, Matisse wrote in May 1918, "High noon is superb but frightening... A little while ago I took a nap underneath an olive tree and what I saw was of a color and softness of relationships that was truly moving. It seems as though it is a paradise that one does not have the right to analyze, however, one is a painter, God damn it. Ah! Nice is a beautiful place! What a gentle and soft light in spite of its brightness!" (ibid., pp. 19 and 23).