Why it matters
A woman stands at a table in a room of intense red, lined with dark blue swirls, contrasting with the green landscape outside the window. Matisse first painted the background green, then blue, and only in 1909 changed it to red.
Did you know?
- It was first shown as Harmony in Blue at the Salon d'Automne of 1908.
- Sergei Shchukin bought it from the exhibition.
- It reworks Matisse's more Impressionist painting The Dessert of 1897.
Based on the Wikipedia article The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
