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The French artist
Henri
Matisse
delighted in painting the blue of his beloved
Cote d'Azur, the green umbrella pines and the rows of elegant white villas
lining the coast. He revelled in capturing the essence of leisurely life
on canvas: men playing boules in the shade of the trees, people
relaxing and enjoying quiet, carefree days in the sun, yachts bobbmg on a
gentle swellin the harbour accompanied by the balmy breezes of the
mistral. Colours, for him, were like the harmony of music. He was
convinced that contemplating sunlit colours induced profound inner calm.
In Dance he explores the calming effect of colour. This is not the
only occasion on which he consciously acted as a painterly pastor, a
priest of the easel, who exuded an almost religious feeling for life. In
1908 he expressed the hope that people might find peace and tranquillity
in his paintings. He loved life's sensuous pleasures, the beauty of the
models who sat for him and the lushness of nature. Painting was his way of
sharing his own zest for life with others from all walks of life. He
certainly succeeded. The Italian painter
Renato
Guttuso called
Matisse's
work a "feast for the senses" and "a design for a paradise-like world".
With the joyous serenity depicted in his paintings, Matisse superbly
"exemplified a love of life and trust in its
beauty". The French writer Louis Aragon, like
Matisse
a member of the French Communist Party, raved about the artists work. His
paintings showed "the victorious smile of our times, since mankind has
begun to turn away from darkness and, with just this smile, triumphantly
confronts the days that are for ever bright and peaceful". In
Matisse's
paintings the sun is almost always shining and the people he portrays
appear carefree. The lightness of being also imbues the five men and women
suspended in dreamy abandon between heaven and earth in Dance.
Later,
Matisse
designed sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in
Paris, for he also loved ballet. Dance represented life and rhythm,
sparkling with vitality and the freshness of youth. In 1905
Matisse
is said to have watched Catalan fishermen dancing the Sardana, an old
round dance with abrupt changes of beat and tempo, on the beach at
Collioure. Perhaps the memory of this scene is lent expression in
Dance. Although
Matisse
frequented the Paris cafe, Moulin de la Galette, where people danced on
Sunday afternoons, he was not sufficiently inspired by the ambience there
to paint it. What most likely captured his imagination at the Paris cafe
were the intriguing steps of the farandole, an ancient Provencal dance,
whose insistent rhythms seem to have underscored his painting.
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