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Henri Matisse at the Hermitage Museum

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Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is exhibited at the The State Hermitage Museum in Hall 440.
The celebrated monumental paintings include the pair of panels known as Dance and Music (both 1910), Family Portrait (1911), Conversation (between 1909-1912).
The first variant of Dance is depicted in another picture entitled Fruits, Flowers, and the Panel “Dance” (1909).

Matisse's Room

Matisse’s visits to Morocco resulted in the paintings entitled Vase of Irises, Bouquet (Arum Lilies), The Moroccan Amido, Zorah Standing, Standing Moroccan in Green (Standing Riff) (all created in 1912), and the most famous work from this series - Arab Coffee House (1913).
On display are portraits created in 1909-1913 - Woman in Green (circa 1909), Girl with Tulips (1910), Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1913).

The latest pictures by Matisse in the Hermitage collection are Ballerina (circa 1927), Young Woman in a Blue Blouse (Portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya) (1939) and Portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya (1947). | © The State Hermitage Museum


Henri Matisse | Music, 1910 | The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Henri Matisse | Music, 1910 | Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

This decorative panel was created as a pair to the Dance for Sergey Shchukin's Moscow mansion.
Again the artist presented five figures against a landscape background executed in very intensive blue and green, but in this world of wondrous torpor the static and isolated figures are engrossed in their music.




Henri Matisse | Dance, 1910 | Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Henri Matisse | Dance, 1910 | The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Sergei Schukin, a great Russian collector of the immediate pre-Revolution years, commissioned two great works from Matisse, "Music" and "Dance" to decorate the stairs of his Moscow home.
The collection was nationalised by the Soviet government after the Revolution and converted into ‘The First Museum of Modern Western Paintings'.
Subsequently it was combined with that of Ivan Morosov and turned simply into the ‘Museum of Modern Western Art’.
The first paintings reached the Hermitage in the 1930s but it was after World War II that the museum was closed and the collections split between the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
The Hermitage got the greater share of the Matisse and Picasso paintings.






Matisse's Room