View of Notre Dame 1902

Henri Matisse made this painting of Notre Dame, we don’t know exactly when, with loose brushstrokes and a muted palette of blues, greens, and yellows. Looking at this work, I imagine Matisse standing at his window, day after day, watching the light change across the cathedral. He must have been battling with the canvas, trying to capture the essence of what he saw, not just the literal details. There’s a push and pull in the paint application, a kind of searching. The thick strokes in the sky suggest movement and depth, the color of the stone is pale as the light hits it, the river reflects the sky. Look at the vertical strokes on the right side of the painting, they create a sense of enclosure, like looking out from inside. Painters like Matisse are in conversation with the history of painting, thinking about impressionism, cubism, and pushing against those boundaries to find new ways of seeing and representing the world. Painting is an evolving conversation, where each artist builds on the ideas of those who came before.