The Dance (painting)

The Dance (second version)

Henri Matisse, 1910

Oil on canvas

260 × 391 cm

The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

The Dance (second version) (La Danse), is a painting from 1910 by Henri Matisse.

[edit] History

The Dance (second version), is a large decorative panel, painted with a companion piece, La Musique, specifically for the Moscow mansion of the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association.

The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist colour palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky's famous musical work The Rite of Spring.

The Dance (second version) is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting".^[1] It is now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

[edit] The Dance (preliminary version)

In March 1909 Matisse painted a preliminary version of this work, known as Dance, which is now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[2] It uses paler colors and less detail. The painting was highly regarded by the artist who once called it "the overpowering climax of luminosity"; it is also featured in the background of Matisse's La Danse with Nasturtiums (1912).

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• Two versions of The Dance

v • d • e Henri Matisse Paintings Woman Reading (1894)  · Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi (1902)  · The green line (1905)  · The Open Window (1905)  · Woman with a Hat (1905)  · Les toits de Collioure (1905)  · Landscape at Collioure (1905)  · Le bonheur de vivre (1906)  · The Young Sailor II (1906)  · Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt (1906)  · Madras Rouge (1907)  · Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra) (1907)  · The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1908)  · Bathers with a Turtle (1908)  · La Danse (1910)  · Still Life with Geraniums (1910)  · L'Atelier Rouge (1911)  · The Conversation (1908–1912)  · Zorah on the Terrace (1912)  · Window at Tangier (1912)  · Le Rifain assis (1912)  · Le rideau jaune (the yellow curtain) (1915)  · The Window (1916)  · The Painter and His Model (1917)  · Interior A Nice (1920)  · Odalisque with Raised Arms (1923)  · Yellow Odalisque (1926)  · The Dance II (mural) (1932)  · Robe violette et Anémones (1937)  · Woman in a Purple Coat (1937)  · La Blouse Roumaine (1940)  · Le Lanceur De Couteaux (1943)  · Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones (1944)  · L'Asie (1946)  · Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (1947)  · The Plum Blossoms (1948)  · Beasts of the Sea (1950)  · The Sorrows of the King (1952)  · Black Leaf on Green Background (1952)  · La Négresse (1952)  · Blue Nude II (1952)  · The Snail (1953)  · Le Bateau (1953) Other works Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence  • Jazz (book) Shows Salon d'Automne Movement Fauvism Teachers William-Adolphe Bouguereau  • Gustave Moreau  • John Peter Russell Collectors Sergei Shchukin  • Gertrude Stein  • Leo Stein  • Albert C. Barnes Family Pierre Matisse  • Paul Matisse Wikimedia  Matisse at Wiktionary  •  Matisse at Wikibooks  •  Matisse at Wikiquote  •  Matisse at Wikisource  •  Matisse at Commons  •  Matisse at Wikinews

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