The Dance (second version)

Infobox Painting|

backcolor=#FBF5DF
painting_alignment=right
image_size=300px
title=The Dance (second version)
artist=Henri Matisse
year=1910
type=Oil on canvas
height=260
width=391
height_inch=
width_inch=
city=St. Petersburg
museum=The Hermitage

"The Dance (second version)" ("La Danse"), is a painting from 1910 by Henri Matisse.

History

"The Dance (second version)," is a large decorative panel, painted with a companion piece, "La Musique", specifically for the Moscow mansion of the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association.

The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist colour palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky's famous musical work "The Rite of Spring".

"The Dance (second version)" is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting". [Russell T. Clement. "Four French Symbolists". Greenwood Press, 1996. Page 114.] It is now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

"The Dance" (preliminary version)

In March 1909 Matisse painted a preliminary version of this work, known as "Dance", which is now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. [John Elderfield. "Henri Matisse: A Retrospective". The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992. Page 181.] It uses paler colors and less detail. The painting was highly regarded by the artist who once called it "the overpowering climax of luminosity"; it is also featured in the background of Matisse's "La Danse with Nasturtiums" (1912).

Notes and references

External links

* [http://painting.about.com/od/arthistorytrivia/ig/Gallery-of-Famous-Paintings/Getty-MatisseDancers.htm Two versions of "The Dance"]