Pink Statuette and Jug on a Red Chest of Drawers

Painted in 1910 and held in the Hermitage, 'Pink Statuette and Jug on a Red Chest of Drawers' belongs to the extraordinary group of still lifes Matisse produced in 1910, the same year he completed Dance and Music for Shchukin. The inclusion of a statuette within a still-life composition was a recurrent device for him — the sculptural object provides a different kind of presence than a vessel or fruit, bringing a human or figural element into an otherwise object-based genre. The red chest of drawers provides the dominant chromatic event, the painting's warm intensity connecting it to the 'Red Room' of the previous year. All these works from 1909–11 show a sustained investigation of a single colour's capacity to transform a domestic space into a pictorial event. The red chest of drawers connects this work to the broader series of red-dominated interiors and still lifes that Matisse produced around 1909–10, in which a single colour transforms the entire environment of a domestic space.

The red chest of drawers anchors the composition as a dominant colour plane, against which the pink statuette and jug create chromatic counterpoints. Matisse treats all surface textures with the same planar economy, privileging colour relationship over material description.