Matisse, “Music Lesson,” 1917, Barnes Foundation

Here is a French family in during the first World War; although the outcome of the war was uncertain, the Germans never far from Paris, and Matisse’s mother was trapped behind enemy lines, for a moment at least, this family seems tranquil and peaceable. Matisse’s oldest child, Marguerite, gives Pierre, his youngest child, a piano lesson. We can always identify Marguerite, the boy’s half sister, in Matisse’s paintings because she had a tracheotomy and wore the black collar to hide the hole. Pierre is learning classical music and some of Haydn is on the piano top; perhaps Chopin is on the music stand.  Seated, smoking and reading, is the older brother Jean; he plays the string instrument.  I can’t remember if he played the violin or the viola.  The three siblings sit comfortably, tranquilly together; Jean does not mind the mistakes, the repetitions, and the interruptions of the music lesson.

In the garden, in the rocker, is Matisse’s wife Amélie, and behind her, a sculpture by Matisse.  Perhaps we can detect a bit of ambiguity in Matisse’s feelings for Amélie.  Her small size seems out of proportion to the others in the picture and the voluptuous nude draws our attention away from the lady of the house.  The sculpture strikes the same pose as his controversial Blue Nude, which he painted a decade earlier; Amélie was Matisse’s model for that picture.  A sort of self-referential joke, perhaps, but placing a nude sculpture of his wife behind a picture of her gives me an uneasy feeling.

The painting on the wall is Matisse’s Woman on a High Stool.  It is typical of Matisse to reference his own paintings in his works.  A bit narcissistic?

I believe this is one of Matisse’s most intimate paintings.

A red piano!  But, for Matisse, the colors, bright and exciting, rub along harmoniously and are not jarring or unexpected.  The floor is the color of wood; the garden, the color of plants; the nude, the color of a nude.  The arabesque work of the music stand carries over in the grille work at the edge of the balcony and the sides of the rocker.  The swirls of the garden plants echo those of the balcony.

Unlike the previous paintings, this painting is completely comfortable; a hundred kilometers away young men are dying by the tens of thousands, but this family, on this beautiful day, has put the war aside.