In search of Blue: Matisse paints Chardin

Chardin, Still LIfe with Pipe and Jug

In the 1890s Matisse was methodically working his way through the great paintings of the Louvre, studying these artists as a writer would study literature. He was determined to be able to paint like the great masters. He started with Chardin's The Pipe, the first painting that Matisse copied in the Louvre. He was confounded by the elusive blue on the padded box in the center of the still life; a blue that could appear pink one day and green the next.  He tried everything to unravel the mystery of this color: examining the color under a magnifying glass, analyzing the light on the objects, studying the texture, the weave of the canvas, and the glazes. He even cut up his own study and put bits of his colored canvas next to the Chardin to match the color exactly, and yet when he put it all together it didn't work. Matisse was studying with Moreau at the time of making his copies of Chardin.  Moreau believed that color had to be thought out:

Be sure to note one thing: which is that color has to be thought, passed through imagination. If you have no imagination, you will never produce beautiful color . . . . The painting that will last is the one that will be thought out, dreamed over, reflected on, produced from the mind, and not solely by the hand's facility at dabbing on highlights with the tip of the brush."

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I wrote the above several years ago. Being the great art historian that I am (don’t gag), I did not make note of where I got my information, which is a shame as it is incorrect. I am currently reading “Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview,” and in it they quote the great art publisher Albert Skira saying that this particular Chardin was the only painting he felt he failed in making an accurate reproduction because of the illusive color of the blue. He is the one who cut up different parts of his reproduction and held them up in front of the painting to check the colors and he was unable to match the blue. In the 1949 interview, Matisse said to Skira that it was easier to reproduce the color in paint because you are using the same tools as Chardin. He felt that the illusive color came about as a combination of the underpainting and glazing.

Matisse said that his paintings were easy to reproduce because he used pure colors from the tube. “Anyone can copy my paintings.” He went on to say, “The quality comes from the quantity and the thickness.”