Narrator 1: The French artist Henri Matisse painted The Red Studio in 1911 using oil on canvas. The painting measures 71 inches wide and 86 inches high. In metric units, it is 181 centimeters wide and 219 centimeters high.
This large painting depicts an interior view of the artist’s studio, reimagined so that the majority of the room is coated in Venetian red, a shade that resembles tomato soup. Matisse has manipulated our sense of space and perspective by making what should be a three-dimensional space appear flat. At first glance, the red walls, floors, and furniture are delineated only by thin yellow, pink, or blue outlines. But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that these outlines were not applied over the red paint. Instead, they are gaps intentionally left by the artist after applying red paint over an earlier composition. The red layer is applied unevenly, allowing hints of the underlying color to show throughout.
Here’s curator Ann Temkin describing the painting:
Curator, Ann Temkin: The Red Studio actually began not as the red studio. The floor was pink, the walls were blue, and all the furniture was an ochre yellow.
After living with that a little bit, Matisse made the very bold decision that he was going to take one color—Venetian red—and coat the whole surface of the painting with it, except his works of art, so that the paintings and sculptures by Matisse, as well as a few of the objects in the studio, those would all pop out from the red.
Narrator: Matisse’s paintings and sculptures are less detailed versions of the actual works. They are rendered with a vibrant spectrum of colors.
Let’s tour this painting as if we were exploring the actual studio space. We’ll begin in the bottom middle of the painting, which is mostly occupied by the red floor.
If we turn toward our right, we’ll encounter a cluster of furniture, represented in the bottom right corner of the painting. The cluster begins with a red chair whose skinny legs and high back are distinguishable only by the colorful gaps Matisse left behind. It is angled with its back toward the viewer. Directly in front of it, toward the middle ground of the composition, we find a low, scoop-shaped chair with a creamy yellow body and brown legs, its seat pointing toward our left. The last object in the cluster is a red drawing table with a green bottom ledge and a white and blue plate set on its surface.
Now let’s turn toward our left where a red table occupies the bottom left corner of the canvas. The table is tilted upwards so that when we face the painting in MoMA’s galleries, we are able to study the variety of objects on its surface.
On the end of the table pointed toward the room, we find a green bud vase with a long neck. Twisting vines with round leaves spring from the top of the vase. As if they had a life of their own, they curve downward to the table and wrap around a small orange sculpture of a reclining nude. At the middle of the table, an empty wine glass and two blue pencils are placed at opposite sides. Finally, we reach the edge of the table that fills the lower left corner of the composition and is closest to us. There is a box of blue pencils, so close we can almost grab them. To the left is a white plate decorated with a blue nude encircled by tiny flowers.
The top half of this painting depicts the back wall of Matisse’s studio where several of his artworks are displayed. Let’s walk further inside, heading toward the far right corner of the room, which is also the top right corner of the painting. There, we find two red stools positioned side-by-side. The stool on our right supports a white bust of a woman’s head in profile while the other one, on our left, holds a sculpture of a bronze female figure reclining her hip against a block-like shape. On the floor beside this second stool is a terracotta-colored vase with a thin neck, bulbous center, and tapered base. Hung on the wall above these objects is a vertical painting of three nude female bathers at a stream, their flesh painted with the same shade of red as the rest of the studio.
If we continue moving along this back wall at the top of the painting, we’ll come upon a red dresser with three drawers, a variety of colorful vessels, and a potted plant on its surface. Propped against it on the ground, we find a second painting—this one shows two peach-toned nude figures with minimal details, resting in a forest setting with a body of water.
The area directly above the dresser is adorned by a horizontal black textile with an orange-gold pattern. And above that, two paintings hang side-by-side at different heights. The painting on our lower right is a still life set against a coral-colored background. In this scene, a vase of flowers rests on a jade-green table. Higher up on the wall and further to our left is a portrait of a sailor in a blue sweater, green pants, and blue cap seated against a light pink background.
Left of the dresser, a tall grandfather clock stretches up to meet the bottom left corner of the sailor painting. It is completely red except for the clock face, which is represented by a white ring with blue scrawls, split into 12 sections by dark gold lines. The clock has no hands.
On the floor beside the grandfather clock, a stack of gold frames and framed canvases leans against the wall. They are varied in size. Propped at the front right of this stack, we find a small framed painting of a coastal landscape with palm trees. Another painting hangs high on the wall above this stack—so high it is partially cut off by the top edge of Matisse’s canvas. It depicts a reclining peach-toned nude figure enveloped by a white scarf and set against a red and pink background.
A final painting is tucked into a corner giving the impression of a second wall adjacent to the one we just explored. The frame is set on the ground so the rest of the painting is propped up against the wall. At the center of this large painting, a reclining peach-toned nude female figure with golden hair stretches diagonally across the vertical composition. She is shown against a pink background with yellow and blue flowers and swirls of sky blue around the figure. The last thing we see on this red wall is a partially cut-off window implied by greenish-white curtains.
Here’s curator Ann Temkin again.
Ann Temkin: The Red Studio is a painting that Matisse himself admitted that he didn't quite understand. And it is just such an incredible example of creative courage, because it's not like you can start painting over with red paint and then decide, “Oh, I don't think that was a good idea.” This was not something he could step back from once he began.
Matisse painted very few self-portraits, but he made many paintings of his studios, often at particularly challenging moments in his work. So when Matisse is making paintings of his works of art, it's his self-portrait.