Still Life with a Red Rug 1906

This is Matisse’s “Still Life with a Red Rug”, made with oil on canvas, where he’s thrown a party of pattern and color onto a tabletop. I can see Matisse, brush in hand, circling the scene, making decisions, adding dabs of pure color in a dance of intuition and intention. Look how the red tablecloth, with its polka dots, creates a vibrating field, against the quieter watermelon and the geometric rug hanging behind. What was he thinking as he painted? Maybe about how each object impacts the other? That vibrant green cloth is just slung over everything, and there's a real push-pull between surface and depth here. It makes me think about Cezanne's influence, but Matisse cranks up the volume. It is an exchange of ideas, like a painterly game of telephone where each artist interprets and transforms what came before.