A-Level: Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté


Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté, 1904, oil on canvas, 37 x 46″ (Museé d’Orsay, Paris)

Key points:

  • Luxe, calme et volupté borrows from the Neo-Impressionist style in its brushwork, but does not adopt Neo-Impressionism’s approach to color.
  • Rather, this painting anticipates the Fauves’s imaginative use of expressive color.
  • Color and form are key ways that early 20th-century artists began to abandon representation for abstraction.

Painted while the artist stayed with the pointillist painter, Signac, at his home in Saint-Tropez on the Côte d’Azur. Matisse’s title comes from Charles Baudelaire’s poem, “L’invitation au voyage (Invitation To A Voyage)” from his collection, The Flowers of Evil. “Luxe, calme et volupté” translates just as it sounds in English: “Luxury, calm, and voluptuous(ness).”

 

 

Cite this page as: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "A-Level: Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté," in Smarthistory, July 26, 2017, accessed March 19, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/henri-matisse-luxe-calme-et-volupte-2/.