Still Life With a Purro (I) 1904

Henri Matisse created this painting, Still Life With a Purro (I), with oil paint, and you can just feel the making of it, right? I imagine Matisse, brush in hand, trying to nail that dark jug on the left, pushing and pulling the paint. Look at the surface—it's a kind of dance between what's represented and the pure, joyful mess of paint. The oranges, the bottle, the cup... they're all kind of vibrating, aren’t they? They are sitting on the edge of the table, maybe about to fall off? I bet Matisse was thinking about Cézanne's apples when he made this. And that background! It's not just "behind" the objects; it's like another character in the painting. It's all part of the same visual idea, really. Every mark feels like a question and an answer, a back-and-forth between seeing and feeling, and between him and other painters.