Portrait of the Artist's Wife

Painted in 1913 and held in the Hermitage, 'Portrait of the Artist's Wife' is one of the most direct and probing images Matisse made of Amélie Parayre, whom he had married in 1898 and who remained his primary model for intimate portraiture through the 1900s and 1910s. By 1913 Matisse was in a period of austere formal reduction following the relative exuberance of the large decorative panels; the portraits of this year show a severity that reflects both Cubism's challenge to figurative painting and his own push toward the essential. Amélie Matisse appears in very few paintings relative to the hundreds of models who sat for him; when she did sit, the results carry a particular psychological weight. The Hermitage's possession of this work, through Shchukin, preserved it outside France during the years when Matisse's reputation was still contested.

Matisse renders his wife with an economy that borders on severity — the face structured through flat colour planes and strong contour rather than the warm tonal blending of conventional portraiture. The palette is restrained, with colour serving structural rather than expressive purposes.