Still Life with Pitcher and Fruit 1898

Henri Matisse made Still Life with Pitcher and Fruit, of uncertain date, as an oil on canvas. Matisse was working in a period when many felt the academic system had grown stuffy and too conservative, and the institutions of art such as the Salon system of state-sponsored exhibitions were beginning to break down. Matisse created an expressive still life that relies on the interaction of color and pattern for its effect. His interest lay less in the objects themselves and more in how they could generate a lively surface, where the conventional separation between foreground and background is abandoned. It's a composition that challenges traditional hierarchies of subject matter and painterly technique. The rise of independent galleries, like that of Ambroise Vollard, allowed artists to bypass the official Salon system and exhibit their work to a small circle of collectors. Matisse benefited from this new ecology of art. It's through understanding these social changes that we can better understand the intentions of this artwork.