A Further Look at Matisse's Departure from Fauvism: Landscapes in Collioure and Tanger

A Further Look at Matisse's Departure from Fauvism: Landscapes in Collioure and Tanger

Matisse’s first trip to Morocco in 1912 presents a plethora of landscapes, the type of focus on topographic accurary that shows his departure from Fauvism even in paintings not focused on women, as in the studies of Zorah. These changes in landscape depictions are most visible when comparing them to previous Fauvist works of a similar composition from Collioure. “Vue sur la baie de Tanger,” the painting below on the left that overlooks the city and its bay, is a quickly-composed painting that still captures the essence of the town. Matisse’s use of carefully-blended color to create an emerald-azure bay and a peach-orange square overtakes the boxlike sketches of houses and hills in the landscape. This painting is very different from “View of Collioure,” the painting below on the right, painted of a similar perspective in Collioure in 1905, where Matisse mastered Fauvism. This Fauvist work is filled with blotches of color, forming barely discernable shapes on canvas that would be unidentifiable had the work not been named appropriately. Consequently, there is a drastic difference between it and “Vue sur la baie de Tanger.” What makes the latter so important a work is that as one of the very first paintings by Matisse when he arrived in Morocco, it shows the immediate kind of response in the artist the new exotic world engendered. Instead of containing vaguely defined, nearly neon-colored objects as in “View of Collioure,” “Vue sur la baie de Tanger” is detailed close enough to show human form. This start of his period of engagement in Morocco shows Matisse’s first initiative to escape the confines of violent Fauvism and begin taking in the actual culture of an exotic society on canvas, beginning with buildings.

VUE SUR LA BAIE DE TANGIER, 1912, on left
Henri Matisse
oil with pen and ink on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

VIEW OF COLLIOURE, 1905, on right
Henri Matisse
oil on canvas
The Hermitage Museum, Leningrad

In this effort to capture the topographic essence of the city, Matisse painted a second work, entitled “Paysage vu d’une fenêtre.” It immediately draws one’s attention to the center, which focuses on the Anglican church of Saint Andrew’s and the city of Tanger, as seen from Matisse’s bedroom window. The colors are striking: not in their brilliance, but in their position. The background, which borders the entire canvas, is a deep eggplant color, while the center subjects are bright gray and white. Matisse maintains a narrow focus on the topography and culture of the city, refusing to stray along stylistic lines back to Fauvism. When examining this painting in the context of its differences from Fauvism, our immediate attention is demanded by a Fauvist work by Matisse that is similar in the viewpoint from which it was painted, but very different in all other accords. “The Open Window,” painted by Matisse in Collioure in 1905, is another Fauve work with violent color and loosely-defined subjects, multi-colored sailboats in the bay, and is similar to “View of Collioure" in color and style. Matisse painted through his window here, as in “Paysage vu d’une fenêtre,” which becomes virtually the only characteristic the two paintings share and proves how much they differ. Jack Flam, author of Matisse: the Man and his Art, notes the most salient feature of this work, the color, when he writes, “The arabesque of the window grillework is played against the large, sweeping curse of the woman’s body, which in turn are set against rectangular slabs of green, red, and orange to produce an image of striking intensity” (Flam 132, 136). Flam’s assertion that Matisse’s use of color produces this “image of striking intensity” affirms that the artist is not focused on the subject as much as he is the use of color, and thus does not create the same effect of topographic accuracy that we see in “Paysage vu d’une fenêtre.” However, this painting fails to bring to our attention any specific topographic or cultural features, and thus exhibits the less-developed style Matisse had yet to escape. “The Open Window” is a mass of bright color that leads the eye trailing over the whole canvas without even capturing a specific important detail of Collioure. This is quite different from the careful depiction of Tanger in “Paysage vu d’une fenêtre.” The immediate attention Matisse devotes to the topographic aspects of this scene in Tanger is what makes his painting part of the general trend away from Fauvism that would only continue to develop during the course of his stay in Morocco, most visibly in his depictions of women.

PAYSAGE VU D'UNE FENÊTRE, 1912/1913, on left
Henri Matisse
oil on canvas
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

THE OPEN WINDOW, COLLIOURE, 1905, on right
Henri Matisse
oil on canvas
Collection Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York