Matisse and His Models

The French expression for thunderbolt—coup de foudre—means “love at first sight,” with all the undertones of violence and risk that were an intrinsic part of Matisse’s passion for painting. Anxiety and  dread hung over his studio sessions. Toward the end of his life he told an interviewer that each canvas began as a flirtation and ended up as a rape. He said it was himself, not his subject—or rather it was the feelings his subject aroused in him—that had to be raped. The subject itself could be fruit, flowers or a fabric screen, as often as a human sitter. The young women who posed for him all learned to live and work in the atmosphere of almost unbearable tension generated by Matisse’s effort to express his emotions on canvas—an effort that drained all his strength.

Matisse’s reputation as a Modernist leader was built on this sort of shock. So his followers saw it as an unforgivable betrayal when he moved from Paris to Nice ten years later and started painting good-looking young women in transparent tops and harem pants lounging on cushioned divans.