The Art Institute of Chicago Henri Matisse's "Bathers by a River" Author(s): Catherine C. Bock Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, Aspects of Modern Art at the Art Institute: The Artist, The Patron, The Public (1990), pp. 44-55+92-93 Published by: The Art Institute of Chicago Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4101568 Accessed: 20-06-2019 15:53 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Art Institute of Chicago is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 20 Jun 2019 15:53:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms FIGURE I. Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954). Bathers by a River, 1910-I6. Oil on canvas; 261.6 x 391.2 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary E S. Worcester Collection (1953.158). Originally this painting was to be part of the ensemble that included Dance II (fig. 7, p. 32) and Music (fig. 8, p. 33), which the Russian collector Sergei I. Shchukin commissioned from Matisse to decorate the most public part of his mansion, the main staircase. After Shchukin decided against buying it, Matisse was to work on the picture in two subsequent campaigns, in 1913 and again in 1916, during World War i, which probably affected its final form. hat I dream of is an art of balance, of purity, and serenity, devoid of troubling and depressing subject matter... HENRI MATISSE, 19o81 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 20 Jun 2019 15:53:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Henri Matisse's Bathers by a River CATHERINE C. BOCK Professor of Art History The School of The Art Institute of Chicago Throughout his long life, the French painter Henri Bathers, originally designed to complete and comple- Matisse (1869-i954) largely succeeded in ful- ment two canvases of 910o-Il, Dance II (fig. 7, p. 32), filling his dream of producing works with and Music (fig. 8, p. 33), was meant to synthesize the untroubled and serene subjects, that is, sunlit interiors, frenzied energy of the former and the contemplative flowers, beautiful women, and colorful near-abstrac- attentiveness of the latter in a scene of "s&r~nite," of tions. The exceptions to this rule constitute a small body active contentment, in which women bathe and socialize of important works - illustrations of violence or death in near a waterfall. The third canvas of the trio, the Art several books, including Jazz (1947), the Crucifix and Institute's Bathers by a River, however, was abandoned Stations of the Cross in the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence in 191o, resumed unsuccessfully in 1913, and finally com- (195I), and, I believe, the Art Institute's Bathers by a pleted in 1916, during World War I. The painting's long River.2 gestation and its subsequent wartime completion resulted Bathers by a River (cover and fig. i) is not ordi- in the radical alteration of the style and, as I shall suggest, narily excepted from Matisse's works about "luxury, of the character of the subject and its meanings. calm, and voluptuousness."3 The prevailing interpreta- American formalist critics and post-World War II tions of the Art Institute's painting have resulted from artists have long valued the canvas as one of a group some combination of historical, stylistic, and bio- painted by Matisse between 1913 and 1917 in which he graphical clues as to its meaning. Historically, the canvas achieved, by means of an exploration of Cubist composi- appears to share the original joyous theme of the decora- tional methods, a new simplicity and structure in his tive panels commissioned for the home of the Russian decorative paintings. As John Golding noted, "Whereas collector Sergei Shchukin in 1909;4 stylistically, it is seen the sinuous muscularity of the dancers and the contained to be the culmination of the artist's assimilation of simplicity of the musician [in Dance and Music] had been Cubism;5 and, biographically, it has been used to demon- given a strongly decorative emphasis, the gravity of the strate the artist's use of real experience-his 1912 and later painting [Bathers by a River] again speaks elo- 1913 voyages to North Africa in this instance-to enrich quently of the Cubist encounter."7 This compositional and transform conventional themes.6 Without attempting strength and austerity marks a high point in the "style- a single exclusionary or authoritative interpretation of history" of Modernism and, according to some histo- this impressive canvas, this paper will highlight aspects of rians, helped prepare the way for the devlopment of non- the painting that pose the difficulties of "reading" it in a objective painting after the war. What is not always taken smooth art-historical narrative either about modern art into account in these formalistic histories is that Matisse or about Matisse's individual artistic achievement. painted Bathers by a River at a moment of intense crisis The historical sequence of the canvas's evolution has and internal division among advanced artists using the recently come to light. We know that a composition of Cubist style. I suggest that part of the meaning of the Art 45 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 20 Jun 2019 15:53:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Institute's canvas arises from the fact that Bathers by a figures, plastically rendered and embedded in the flat River is a strategic response to this crisis. ground. Reversing the Galatea myth, the figures Finally, Matisse scholars have relied on the artist's exchange their pink flesh tones for pervasive stone-gray temperament or on the evidence of patterns of recurrence overpainting. in his work to insist on the unity and coherence of his Although the canvas encourages lateral, left-to-right oeuvre and of particular works. Despite the absence of a reading, it is not without spatial cues. The figure on the complete biography of the artist-authorized or unau- left stands on a repoussoir cluster of light gray foliage; she thorized-many problems in Matisse's art have been looks at the second figure, which, higher up and extend- resolved by recourse to the painter's character traits and ing beyond the frame, appears to occupy a more distant the crises in his life. The information we do have indi- position. Not only is the exact activity of this figure cates that Matisse possessed a generally conservative ambiguous, but its upper portion-head and shoulders character, even though he periodically engaged in unex- that run off the upper edge of the picture plane-is pectedly audacious artistic behavior. The consistency of obscure, multiform, possibly veiled.14 The canvas is the choices Matisse made and of the life he led has been bisected by a black vertical band, which emphasizes the extended to his artistic productions; thus contradictions canvas surface while alluding to deep space. To the right and conflicts within and between works are minimized of this band of black stands a robed figure, positioned or explained away. For example, Jean Guichard-Meili lower and, hence, closer to the viewer than her counter- wrote: "In these [post-i918] paintings, even the smallest part on the far left. The last figure, at the far right, whose and most hurried ones, there is a marvelous certainty, ankles are cut by the framing edge, advances into the exactness of proportion, variety and elegance. This viewer's space. peaceable, balanced Matisse is no less true to himself than An obvious transition occurs from left to right. The the Matisse of the great periods of conquest."' figure at the far left moves toward a natural paradise of Especially since the publication of his written state- luxuriant lime-green foliage, looking toward the seated/ ments on art, unusual weight has been given to his wading figure in the middle distance. The latter thrusts expressed intentions or his post-facto reflections.9 But her foot into the viscous black band near the center of the these are often contradictory or inconclusive. For exam- canvas. The exact median, however, lies between the edge ple, according to his daughter, Marguerite, Matisse con- of the black vertical and the rising curve of the diamond- sidered the Chicago painting unfinished; on the other headed serpent emerging from the lower edge of the hand, he numbered it one of five of his most important, picture. The line of the serpent, which flows into the pivotal canvases.10 As Amy Goldin once remarked, a downturned arms of the third figure, helps to bridge the propos of Matisse, "The artist has privileged access to his visual gulf and obtrusive flatness effected by the black intentions, but not to his accomplishment, and his own vertical. Despite this mediation, one is struck by the assessments cannot free us from the necessity of making contrast of the verdant left side of the composition with our own."" Thus, while taking account of the artist's the unearthly right side, with its stark figure-ground comments on his work, we will place them in the context relations.