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Travel back in time as SFMOMA recreates the moment when Henri Matisse broke the rules of modern art.
In 1905, Henri Matisse sent shockwaves through the art world with Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), a portrait of his wife Amélie painted in bold color and loose brushstrokes that defied convention. The gallery where it hung inspired critics to brand Matisse and his contemporaries “fauves,” or wild beasts, with one reviewer famously declaring, “A pot of paint has just been thrown in the public’s face.”
Opening May 16th, Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal offers visitors an unprecedented look at one of the most consequential paintings in modern art history, bringing together the greatest number of works from that historic display in more than a century.
Henri Matisse, ‘Marine (La Moulade)’ (Seascape [La Moulade]), 1906(Courtesy of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, bequest of Mildred B. Bliss)
Artists in Paris had been experimenting with new approaches to color in painting since the late nineteenth century. Impressionist painters in the 1870s championed radical techniques like short brushstrokes, pure unmixed colors, and bright synthetic pigments to capture light and portray modern life. Post-Impressionists took even more liberties with color, form, and brushwork. But Matisse’s Femme au chapeau marked a whole new direction in style, where color is fully divorced from reality, capturing sensation rather than naturalistic representation.
Though Matisse had received some recognition by 1905, he was still very much a struggling artist. The salon, and the controversy surrounding these new works with Femme au chapeau at the fore, was the big break that propelled Matisse to success, cementing his reputation as a leader of the post-Impressionist avant-garde, and his place in the canon of art history.
See why paintings by Matisse, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, and others sparked such heated debate and admiration during their time—and how Femme au chapeau continues to shape perceptions about color, content, form, and expression among artists working today, including Hilary Harkness and Rachel Harrison.. The exhibition also uncovers its impact closer to home, on Bay Area Figurative artists like Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Park.
Experience the full story and radical spirit of Femme au chapeau exclusively at SFMOMA’s landmark exhibition. .
// ‘Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal’ is on display at SFMOMA from May 16th through September 13th, 151 3rd St. (SoMa), sfmoma.org
Henri Matisse, ‘Corsican Landscape,’ 1898(Courtesy of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, bequest of Harriet Lane Levy)
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