English Notes Henri MATISSE 1869-1954 PAYSAGE, LA MAISON DE RENOIR A CAGNES, 1921 Henri Matisse arrived in Nice on December 20, 1917. He stayed at the Hôtel Beaurivage where he rented a room overlooking the sea that he also used as a studio. On December 31st of that same year, accompanied by Georges Besson, he visited August Renoir, whom he had never met, in the master's home, Collettes, in Cagnes. Matisse went back to see Renoir again in 1919, as a photograph* of himself at Collettes with August Renoir, his sons Jean and Claude, and Greta Prozor, attests. Renoir purchased the Collettes estate in Cagnes in 1907 and moved into the house he built there the following year. However, in his paintings the painter always represented the old farm occupied by the former owners, and not his own, brand-new house. For him, the farm symbolized the authentic rural atmosphere he sought to preserve. In 1915 he painted La ferme des Collettes (fig. 1) with the house in the center of the painting, isolated, luminous in a halo of summer green. Henri Matisse, who apparently spent time in Nice in 1921, painted La maison de Renoir à Cagnes although the painter had already been dead for two years. The subject is the same, but each painting clearly resembles their authors: the Renoir is part of the usual development of an aging Impressionist, while the Matisse wrestles with the issues of its time. He explained himself in 1919: “I worked as an Impressionist, directly from life, and then I looked for a more intense concentration and expression both in the lines and colors. Obviously I had to sacrifice other qualities, such as thickness of paint, spatial depth, and rich detail. Now I would like to bring all this together…”. Paysage, La maison de Renoir à Cagnes is a magnificent illustration of the painter's words. *Photograph reproduced in The Early Years in Nice, 1916-1930 by Jack Cowart and Dominique Fourcade, Editions Abrams, New York, 1986, p. 20. The photograph is not precisely dated, but is probably from 1918 or 1919. Fig. 1: La Ferme des Collettes, 1915, Oil, 46 x 51 cm Literature : Pierre Schneider, Matisse, Flammarion, 1984;19 September 2000 - 15 January 2001, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Méditerranée, de Courbet à Matisse.