Matisse arrived in Paris in autumn 1906 with two pictures that he had recently painted in the south of France. Young Sailor I has all the hallmarks of his Fauve style, while Young Sailor II features extreme simplification of form. Not entirely sure of his new direction, Matisse told friends that the second version had been created by the local postman.
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During the summer of 1912, the wealthy Russian collector Sergei Shchukin visited Matisse at his home in Issy-les-Moulineaux, just outside of Paris. Shchukin's request for a triptych may have inspired Matisse to modify the composition of Nasturtiums with the Painting "Dance" I when he repeated it on a second canvas.
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The dramatic cliffs of Étretat inspired generations of French artists, including Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet. In 1920, Matisse positioned himself as the heir to this tradition with three identically sized canvases in which he explored the effects of subtle stylistic differences.
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In the 1930s, Matisse hired a photographer to document his progress on certain paintings. Ten photographs taken during the creation of The Large Blue Dress reveal Matisse's extensive reworking of the composition as he progressed from a more naturalistic sketch to a flatter, stylized image.
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Matisse created his final, fully realized easel paintings in his rented house in Vence during the late winter of 1947 and early spring of 1948. The seventy-nine-year-old artist was regarded as one of the greatest colorists of his generation, but admirers were still unprepared for these "profuse, luxuriant, exuberant" pictures.
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