Nice, intérieur

Description

[Analyse]
The model for Interior, Nice is Antoinette Arnoud. Matisse met Arnoud in January of 1919, and she would become his preferred model and an inspiration for much of his work for a period—until the spring of 1921. Interior, Nice dates from early in [this] period, and a number of the stylistic changes it manifests are characteristic of the entire ensuing decade, in general the setting in an intimate interior, most often a boudoir or bedroom with either a window or a balcony overlooking the sea.
The elements of these rooms connote reflection as well as a subtle eroticism and voyeurism. Interior, Nice, is no exception, although the theme here is one of reverie and contemplation. Arnoud, wearing a blue-gray dressing gown, sits at a boudoir table reading a book.
The sunlight falls gently through the curtains, illuminating the scene and contributing to the impression of calm solitude. Arnoud's gown, and the feminine accoutrements on the table give the picture a domestic atmosphere. The intimacy of the setting is heightened by the muted palette and the luminous quality of Matisse's rendering of the various fabrics and draperies. Blue-gray infuses the picture, uniting it through a play of subtle tonal shifts from one gray or violet to another. Many of the objects are painted to suggest layers of transparency, which gives the picture a shimmering delicacy. The lively black underdrawing in the short curtain at the window is set against the quick curves of a delicate white floral pattern. The curtain's transparency is suggested by the application of darker colors where the sea, and figures and trees on the boardwalk, appear behind it in the distance. Almost nowhere is the white ground of the painting completely covered, and areas that are unpainted altogether contribute to the overall luminescence of the picture.
The composition is such that the outside world seems remote, as in a different way does the model, engrossed in her book. Yet the picture opens up, inviting the viewer into this intimate setting. Set off by the repeated horizontals and verticals of the French door, the shutters, the horizon line, and the curtain rod, the activity along the shore seems far away. The window area behind the seated figure is unexpectedly complex and ambiguous. The sense of depth induced by the perspectival view of the table and its contents is flattened and telescoped by the interior draperies, the closed right side of the French door opening onto the balcony, the open left side of the French door, and the closed full-length blue exterior shutter, to the right of which a slender sliver of space is open to the sea beyond. These multiple openings and closings of interior and exterior doors, reinforced by numerous ambiguous horizontals and verticals confound the viewer.
Interior, Nice both closes off the exterior and includes the viewer in its world. In Matisse's merging of a pictorial space with an emotional world, it becomes clear that the physical, spatial extension of the room is inseparable from the psychological invitation of the canvas.
Karen K. Butler, Matisse in the Barnes Foundation, vol. 2 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015), 270-5.