Matisse first moved to Nice in the winter of 1917–18 and gradually became a more or less permanent resident there, staying in the town or its environs every year for the rest of his life. During his first winter sojourns he resided in a series of modest hotels, choosing to live in deliberate isolation. Removed from his family, cut off from the Parisian art world and distanced from his collectors and supporters, he turned inwards to focus relentlessly on his art. His hotel room became his studio, and in this cramped setting with its few furnishings and a view across the Promenade des Anglais to the sea he found limitless material for paintings. Usually there is a female model posing, sometimes in elaborate costume or sometimes naked or, as in our painting, engaged in some leisurely pursuit such as reading. Matisse worked with immense concentration in an effort, he said, to, ‘push further and deeper into true painting’.

The paint in this work from 1919 is thinly and rapidly applied, but the appear­ance of spontaneity is misleading since it seems as if every aspect of the composition was calculated with great care. The girl absorbed in her reading is Antoinette Arnoud, a slender young model who posed frequently for Matisse at this time. The elegant shape of her whorl of hair is echoed across the picture in the form of the mirror handles, the lopsided bunch of carnations and in the painted image on the artist’s canvas at the left. Throughout the picture Matisse brings contrasting elements together: the light muslin tablecloth which radiates against the dark, chocolate black of the background; the realistic depiction of the girl which is played off by the schematic, almost abstract image of the artist; the compressed space of the interior which is punctured by the reflected view of the outside world in the mirror. As we study the painting, we gradually become more aware of the artifice involved and the tension that Matisse builds through the confrontation and interplay between these simple components.

The title of this picture has always been something of a puzzle. It is sometimes known as The Painting Lesson although there is no obvious sign of any teaching going on. Yet it is a title that Matisse himself either provided or at least accepted when it was used during his lifetime. Perhaps we should not read too much into this but it is tempting to see the work itself as a lesson in painting. In this complex image the artist seems to be experimenting with the basics of art, testing the boundaries between realism and abstraction, between colour and drawing and between the illusion of space and the flatness of decorative pattern.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.