Cross and Signac Art Research

Cross and Signac were experimenting with juxtaposing small strokes (often dots or "points") of pure pigment to create the strongest possible visual vibration of intense colour. Matisse adopted their technique and modified it repeatedly, using broader strokes. By 1905 he had produced some of the boldest colour images ever created, including Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) (1905, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), a striking picture of his wife. The title refers to a broad stroke of brilliant green that defines Madame Matisse's brow and nose. In the same year Matisse exhibited this and similar paintings along with works by his companions, including AndrÉ Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. As the result of this exhibition, the group was dubbed les fauves (literally, "the wild beasts") because of their use of vivid colours, their distortion of shapes, and the extremes of emotionalism in which they seemed to have indulged.

While he was regarded as a leader of radicalism in the arts, Matisse was beginning to gain the approval of a number of influential critics and collectors, including the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein and her family. Among the many important commissions he received was that of a Russian collector who requested mural panels illustrating dance and music (both completed in 1911; now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg). Such broadly conceived themes suited Matisse ideally; they allowed him freedom of invention and play of form and expression. His images of dancers, and of human figures in general, convey expressive form first and the particular details of anatomy only secondarily. Matisse extended this principle to other fields; his bronze sculptures, like his drawings and works in several graphic media, reveal the same expressive feelings seen in his paintings.

Although sophisticated, Matisse always emphasized the importance of instinct and intuition in the production of a work of art. He argued that an artist did not have complete control...