Harmony in Red (The Red Room) - 1908
The Hermitage in St. Petersburg
71" x 87"

This painting was originally designed as a dinning room panel for the Russian collector Sergy Shchukin. Harmony in Red (or Red Room as it is sometimes known) was painted by Matisse in his Paris studio which looked out over a monastery garden. He wrote of the picture himself; "The luxuriant raspberry red fabric with its energetic twists of blue pattern seems to sink down from the wall, taking over the surface of the table and uniting it in a single whole, swallowing up the three-dimensional space of the room and masterfully confirming the decorative potential of the canvas surface. Matisse first made such uncompromising use of this compositional device here, in "The Red Room". He created an impression of space in the picture within which the female figure could exist. As the focus of the picture she seems perfectly natural and in combination with the open window, through which we see a green garden with flowering plants, allows the eye to move into the depths of the canvas.