Portrait of Madame Matisse Green Stripe
Portrait of Madame Matisse Green Stripe fully reflected the characteristics of Matisse Fauvism style. Although its color was extremely intense and strong, the whole painting was very quiet. Here the color was completely a product of subjective feeling, rather than the objective faithful mimic. It was said that Mrs. Matisse was once dressed in black and posed to let Matisse paint. But what he painted was the portrait in red with extremely bright colors. In this painting, Matisse painted a green thick line in the center of the face; this line became the core of the painting. The face was divided by the bright green line, from the hairline to the chin. At this point, Matisse and his colleagues were to establish the ideas proposed by Gauguin, symbolists and Nabis: the artist could freely use the colors regardless of the natural appearance in order to establish a kind of abstract shapes and lines structure. This kind of structure had nothing to do with basic structural things such as women, trees, still life, etc.
Perhaps, the reason why Matisse's painting was shocking is that his theme was simple and well known. Compared to those exotic Gauguin paintings, this method of color usage was more popular. Not only the structure of the whole face clanged to the green line, but also many elements were on the line and got the unity and balance. If there was no this line, the whole painting will became loose; it was thanks to the green line, that the black eyes and eyebrows were not too strong, and the black hair and green collar were able to be linked up. And the face could be properly placed between hair and clothes. The green line also linked the head and green background together, making the head not open the distance to destroy the plane feeling because of the red and orange. In order to strengthen this plane feeling, the painter intentionally painted the background on the left orange to pull it to the front, allowing us to feel there was no distance between the background and the avatar. A strong contrast between red and green produced the flashing dazzling effect, so that the screen was full of pure painting charm. Draw a calm head would give birth to such a rich visual effect, and this effect was obtained by carefully managing the different color prowess. People had to exclaim Matisse's exceptional ability to control colors and strokes.
