Blue Pot and Lemon

Painted in 1897 and held in the Hermitage, 'Blue Pot and Lemon' is one of Matisse's earliest surviving still lifes and already shows his departure from the academic conventions in which he had been trained. Having enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Gustave Moreau in 1895, Matisse was simultaneously making copies in the Louvre and developing his own sensibility through independent still-life work. The combination of a blue ceramic vessel and the sharp yellow of a lemon creates a chromatic opposition that prefigures his later colour thinking, even if the handling here is more conventionally descriptive. The Hermitage acquired several of these early works through the Shchukin collection, though Shchukin's primary acquisitions were from Matisse's mature period; some early works entered via other routes.

The handling shows Matisse still working within a broadly Impressionist-influenced approach, with visible brushwork describing light on different surfaces. The blue and yellow opposition gives the composition its chromatic identity.