Odalisque à la culotte rouge

Painted in 1922 and held in the Jean Walter-Paul Guillaume Collection (Musée de l'Orangerie), 'Odalisque à la culotte rouge' (Odalisque with Red Trousers) is one of the most boldly coloured of Matisse's Nice-period odalisques. The red trousers — harem pants drawn from the North African costume he had collected — provide the painting's chromatic keynote, setting up a contrast with the figure's skin tones and the surrounding interior space that is characteristic of his approach to colour throughout this period. The odalisque series allowed him to work through the relationship between the human figure and patterned textile almost indefinitely, each canvas proposing a different configuration of these elements. Paul Guillaume's collection became one of the primary repositories of this body of work.

The red trousers dominate the lower portion of the composition as an intense colour area, drawing the eye before the face or body. Matisse sets this against the cooler tones of the upper body and background, creating a strong warm-cool opposition.