Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Henri Matisse
French; 20th-century
Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College Museum of Art
45%
Vénitienne (en buste). 1921. Oil on canvas
The quick snorts of paint that make up the sitter's arms are nice, and so are those vertical strips in the background, which imply that there's depth to this scene without actually defining it. But the disconnect between the verisimilitude of the face and the sketchiness of the body does not come off, probably because there's not enough abstractness to make the formal reductions seem significant on their own terms, rather than instrumental. That boutonnière, for instance, could have been painted by Romney or any other fast-handed Western painter. There is charm to this picture, but it's a less than minor Matisse. (TFS, 2025)