The Black Boat 1920

Henri Matisse, sometime around the turn of the century, made this oil painting, The Black Boat. You can tell he’s figuring things out – he’s using paint to feel his way through the scene, like someone sketching with a very loaded brush. I like the way the colors aren't overworked, but sort of exist in their own right. The brushstrokes are really evident, especially in the sky and water, where you can see how he mixed the colors right on the canvas. Look at the dark silhouette of the boat itself, it's a bold shape that grounds the whole composition. And then there's that little figure on the beach, almost like an afterthought, but adding a human presence to the scene. It’s got that feeling of early modernism, a bit like something by the German expressionist, Emil Nolde, where the raw, emotional impact of color and form is everything. It's a reminder that art is not just about representation, but about feeling, about making marks that capture a moment, an emotion, a way of seeing.