Open Window, Collioure ~ Matisse

Title:Open Window, Collioure

Artist:Matisse, Henri

Country of Origin: France

Date:1905

Medium and Dimensions (without frame): Oil on Canvas; 55.3 x 46 cm (21 3/4 x 18 1/8 in.)

Matisse always had a gift of making even the simplest of objects appear as though they were the most interesting and vibrant as he painted them on his canvas. This painting by him predominantly utilizes animated and geometrical shapes. The vibrancy of the colors and their contrast against each other make every characteristic of the painting stand out on its own. The French window overlooks perhaps the bay of the Mediterranean Sea at Collioure, with sailboats as the background, the flower pots and vines framing the frameless window as the middle ground and the window doors and colorful walls as the foreground.

Formal Analysis

Matisse used oil paints to make this painting and it was painted on a linen canvas. The colors Matisse used were very vibrant colors because even after a hundred and eleven years the painting looks as fresh as ever. The saturation of color in the painting is bright, pure and used to its maximum intensity and is in no way dull or muted. At some places like those on some of the window’s glass and on the water, the colors seem to have been layered to give a more natural effect of reflection as both are reflective surfaces. Matisse has used large quantities of for multiple spaces like the sky, boats, the lovely flower pots and the leaves on the vine hence creating the impasto texture which gives a three-dimensional aspect to the surface. he probably used a painting brush to create the impasto texture as the strokes are subtle and rounded with soft edges with grooves in the middle. The strokes look like they were flowing in continuity as some of the colors from the previous strokes haves shown to be mixing with other strokes. For instance, the leaves of the vine have dark green and yellow mixed in them and the sky has the surrounding blue and white mixed together giving it an iridescent look. The water as well has the mix of some of the pink reflecting from the sky as well as some of the blue. The strokes are mostly three-dimensional, small and irregular scattered mostly in between while the strokes quite literally framing the painting as window frames have flatter and subtler texture which do not draw that much attention in terms of dimensionality. The strokes were over all very discernable and the surface especially in the center of the canvas had raised strokes which made the scenery look more authentic. The strokes were applied in a carefully calculated fashion because there is no sign of left over color in the background that may show paint removal and reapplication.

The types of color that Matisse used are very exaggerated, vivacious and different from the color palette that most artists of that time or the times before used. The bright colors like the Fuchsia and the Caribbean Green of the wall are clearly clashing and it is probably because Matisse intended them to. The period in which this painting was made by Matisse was during the les Fauves or Fauvism era during which the use of strident colors and wild brushwork while the subject matter was simple was very typical. So in that sense, the color contrast and liveliness of Matisse’s painting was supposed to clash but also be in harmony with each other. Most of the colors used in this painting are not directly taken from the spectral color but are in fact admixtures. Like the peach for the boats and door frame, the lavender blue for the sky and a mix of jade and Caribbean green for the walls. The colors seem to appear in different hues that gradually change in some places like the walls but abruptly in the others like some of the glasses from the windows. The painting has a balance between the usage of warm colors and cool colors and the over all value pattern of the colors lie between 4-10 (4 being the darkest and 10 the lightest). Not many parts in the painting project darkness or shadow and hence nothing can be classified in terms of 0 being the darkest value. Matisse made this painting by setting it somewhere between the middle and light values with lots of pastel shades that are bright and striking. There are small areas of contrast scattered all throughout the painting as Matisse made it in a way that colors would be jarring against each other. As this was made during the era of Fauvism, the colors are probably not relating to the color as it was seen in nature and they are also not arbitrary but are rather suggestive of reality with a little bit of exaggeration. As a characteristic of the Fauvism era, colors were supposed to deviate from what was real, it was supposed to exist on the canvas independently. For the most part, being a painting with bright colors, it seems as though they are self-luminous but the dark green area above the window where the light is being obstructed shows that the luminosity in the painting may be affected by the light coming from outside the open window. The combination of the colors overall has a very dramatic effect as it is supposed to in accordance with the Fauvism movement. The forms like the leaves, sky, sea and to an extent the sail boats have been painted on by touches or spots of color and the forms like the doors of the window, flower pots, and outlines of the boats have been defined by a line and them filled in with color.

There are many pronounced lines in the painting such as that of the window frame, the walls and the frame of the frameless window above the pots. The painting is literally a bare window frame captured by a door frame which in turn is captured by the whole picture’s frame. Mostly all lines are of the same width, straight and typically angled at 90 degrees. These lines seem to possess the property of calmness as they are colors like red, blue and green which are not as vibrant as others and they are also holding the forms of excitement like the impasto textured sky, vines and leaves in the pots. The lines seem to have been formed by calculated control because they make the frame of both the windows which are the subject of the painting.

The space is formed through one one-point perspective as the diagonal lines from the window frames all line up to meet at the point in the middle right above the sails of the sail boats. There are overlapping shapes like rectangles and squares like that of the two big windows and then the two small windows at the top. The space seemed to have been formed after the figures had set into it because the lines are clear and don’t seem to be mixing with other colors which would then show overlapping. The emotions of the window figures are definitely determined by the figures within the painting because they are what enhance the simplicity of the windows. The space in the painting is seen through the eyes of someone within it because the window gives a view of the sailboats on the bay. With the array of contrasting strident colors and multiple elements, the eyes dart from one element to another hence the viewing is rapid and abrupt as the eye shoots forwards and backwards within the work. The relation of the viewer to the action taking place in the work is that of the eye level. The action taking place in the painting is happening at the same level as the viewer’s eye level. The space in the painting is immeasurable as the farthest point which is beyond the sailboats is not clear at all, it could be going on forever into the Mediterranean Sea. Hence it gives the viewer an idea that the space in the painting may seem restricted at first but is extensive outside of the window. The shapes and figures are located mostly in the foreground of the painting like the window doors and the flower pots. The major emphasis is on solids as Matisse has tried to fill the voids with as many objects as possible, for instance, the pots with flowers, the vines, and the sailboats; it is hard to miss these while analyzing the painting. Matisse does use specific intervals in between his figures for expressing relief from the brightly colored figures. He uses the sky and the water as spaces for relief; the sky divides the upper part of the window from the sails of the sailboats and the water divides the sailboats and lower part of the window which include the vines and flower pots. The walls also create a planned space for capturing the whole picture and not create confusion.

The aspect of light is a little tricky in paintings from the fauvism era because just like other paintings from that time this painting uses very vibrant colors which could be illuminating the painting on their own. Although there is a space above the window with two small windows that have a dark space between them and maybe it is so because the light source coming from outside the room doesn’t reach till there. Hence the lighting involved in this painting then it is the natural light coming from outside. The light coming in is warm as the glow of the painting seems warmer with hues of red and yellow. The light definitely illuminates the flower pots, vines creeping up the outside window and the sailboats. The use of light is definitely to illuminate the objects as well as set a lively mood. Matisse abjures chiaroscuro as he wants to avoid the conventional representation. Hence there are not many shadows in this painting apart from the shadow on the wall between the two small windows and behind the right window door. The proportion of the shadow to the light is perhaps only one-fourth of the painting. The shadows only fall where the outside light cannot reach them so in a way they commensurate the light and its source but the presence of light is so much in comparison with the shadows that their proportionality is not equal. There is so much going on in this painting in terms of color and figures that the shadows could sometimes be overlooked and thus they don’t really contribute to the work structurally or dramatically.

Matisse has used the shapes found in nature but manipulated them in his own way to make them seem simpler to understand. Matisse simply distorted the shapes of nature in his painting because the Fauvism era typically used simplicity in figures but expression in colors. The shapes that he uses to distort are the leaves, flowers, sky and the sea. The process he’s used to create the shapes consist of abrupt small strokes and impasto and are not really coming directly from Matisse’s imagination as they have been used before by Monet and Van Gogh in their paintings. The variety of shapes varies from small ones for the leaves and flowers whereas long ones for the sky and the sea. The transition of the shapes from long to small is abrupt and scattered.

The painting as a whole seems very carefully ordered and the relative degree of clarity of the structure is simple. The harmony of the painting as a whole seems to tone down the harshness of the vivid colors. In this painting the balance of integration between near and distant objects is achieved through receding parallel planes, the first is the red windowsill of the French window, the second is the windowsill of the open window and third are the sailboats lined up. All forms in the painting are contained within the window frames. This composition is a closed composition contained within the frame because the viewpoint is from inside a room and we are seeing outside of a framed window, we cannot be sure if the room is as small as painted or is bigger than what is shown whereas if the painting was that of the nature we could say that it would have extended beyond the area of the frame. The eyes of the viewer fall on the flower pots first and it travels up to the sea leading to sailboats and the two small windows above then the gaze goes down onto the window door and the vines around the outside window and then the sky. The path that the eye follows is constructed mostly of space and color and the resulting compositional form has the shape of a vertical rectangle.

Matisse’s Open Window, Collioure is not a very large painting, measuring 55.3cm by 46cm. Matisse’s paintings had never been too big and this one is the size that is because he wasn’t drawing a perfect picture, he was drawing a painting inspired by the fauvism movement and using those exuberant colors on a large scale would have cost a lot but also would have been a painstaking task to put together.

For this painting, Matisse went to Collioure, a small town on the Mediterranean coast of France in the summer of 1905. He started the Fauvism movement because he was fond of bright colors and wanted then to outshine the subject or the delivery of the paintings. That is where the Open Window came into creation; Matisse wanted to fill his canvas with the beauty that he saw in the scenery rather than the perfection he could put into it. Matisse is trying to communicate the idea that sometimes it is okay to walk the unknown path and take chances. He is exploring a whole new dimension of painting and is not that concerned by what he has uncovered because he just wants to paint and have fun. Through this painting, we can feel that Matisse was happy as he had been traveling with his friend André Derain and was seeing new inspirational art and artists. As one of the leaders of theFauvism movement, Matisse expressed through his paintings that the artwork relied more on expression rather than perfection hence in this painting he expressed the shapes in nature as simply as possible but used dynamic colors to make them come alive.