Judge Jacob M. Moses

American

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We look slightly down onto a nearly nude woman with pale pink skin, who sits facing away from us as she lifts her hands to her dark hair in this vertical painting. The scene is painted with broad, visible strokes, and some details are difficult to make out. The woman's torso and head almost fill the vertical height of the painting. The scene is loosely painted so some details are indistinct, but she seems to face a mirror above the small table of a vanity. Visible brushstrokes in tones of pale peach and pink, taupe, and faint sage green capture her spine, shoulder blades, the muscles of her arms, and the dimple above her round buttocks. She uses both hands to pin up her chestnut-brown hair above a rectangular clip painted in muted gold with touches of light pink. She sits sideways in a wooden chair so the ladder-back is to our right. Her thighs are wrapped in a fluffy white piece of cloth, perhaps a towel, which may be wrapped with a ruby-red cloth or it could be a red cushion beneath. The surface of the narrow tabletop in front of her, to our left, is painted with areas of sage green, elephant gray, and royal blue. About a dozen orbs in coral orange and fuchsia pink above and around a band of canary yellow suggest flowers in a yellow vase along the left side of the table. The mirror above the vanity has a wide, gold frame. The woman’s reflection is painted with long strokes of ash brown with a few touches of rose pink. Though abstracted, the reflection seems to capture her torso and one bent elbow. The wall to our left of the vanity is pale pea green and to our right, dark brown. Streaks of honey-brown against a black field in the lower right corner suggests an area rug on an otherwise peanut-brown floor. The artist signed the work in marine blue in the lower left corner, “Henri Matisse.”
Henri Matisse, La coiffure, 1901, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.165

La coiffure

Henri Matisse · 1901 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.165