FS Colour Series: Tea Rose Inspired by Henri Matisse’s Indulgent Interiors

Seville Still Life, 1911

Interior views were one of Henri Matisse’s most enduring subjects throughout his career, a theme which allowed him to indulge in his great passion for decorative patterns, surfaces, textures, and colours. Tea Rose’s hot pink was one of the shades he returned to again and again, colouring anything from heavy curtains to lush carpets and smooth floor tiles. This fleshy shade gave his interiors a humane warmth, conveying the qualities of comfort and ease he so often found within his domestic spaces, and those he wanted to conjure up in the mind’s eye of his audience. He famously wrote in his notebook in 1908, “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter… a soothing, calming influence of the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

FS Tea Rose Signature Finish Midweight linen

Trained under the French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau in Paris during the 1890s, Matisse learned early on the potent and arresting qualities of colour for conveying the most vivid artistic expression, and this thread ran all the way from his Fauvist landscapes of the early 20^th century to his interior views that he revisited throughout the rest of his career. On first discovering this emotive joy for colour, he wrote, “From the moment I held the box of colours in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”

An avid collector of patterned textiles gathered during his travels throughout France, Morocco, Tahiti, Algeria, and beyond, he found endlessly inventive ways of arranging and rearranging what he called his “working library” of textiles into the many places he lived, transforming them into an indoor garden of Eden that became the starting point for so many of his most celebrated paintings. In Seville Still Life, 1911, Matisse transforms a simple view of a hotel room in Seville with a heady array of clashing patterns and prints, which seem to fill the foreground of the painting with the abundance of a garden in full bloom. He neutralises the intoxicating patterns by setting them against broad, flat areas of warm and enveloping pink, creating soothing qualities of comfort and ease.

Two Women in an Interior, 1921

In the later painting Two Women in an Interior, 1921, Matisse shows an intimate indoor space from a bird’s eye view, in which two women are nestled within a rich array of textures and patterns, caught in a seemingly intimate moment as if unaware of being watched. The searing heat of the eye-catching pink and red chequered floor is mirrored by a hot red panel on the right, and these warm hues contrast sharply with the crisp, sheer white curtains and green patterned wallpaper, which seem to hold within them the fresh breeze drifting in from the ever so slightly-opened balcony windows.

The Roofs of Collioure, 1905

Throughout his mature career Matisse would spend his winters in Nice, soaking up the unique light and colour of the Mediterranean coast during the colder season. His spirited and colourful paintings of Nice interiors, including the joyfully vibrant Interior at Nice, 1924, are now among his best-known works of art. In this artwork Matisse scatters streaks of hot coral pink throughout the entire scene, spreading it around the doorframe, across the ripe, fleshy fruit, and into the receding room in the near distance. He contrasts this rich and warm hue with cooler strands of yellow, blue and green, to create an airy freshness and vitality. As with so many of his paintings, this work showcases Matisse’s skillful mastery in balancing an array of opposing hues, and the endlessly inventive ways he found of bringing them into one.