37, Matisse asked his model Lydia Delectorskaya to pose in a purple robe, for a painting he later named “Purple Robe and Anemones.” When Matisse started the painting he had no intention of painting a portrait that looked like a photograph and readily admitted that his paintings were not faithful re-creations of reality. He believed that taking liberties with reality allowed him to convey the very essence of his subject. When accused of painting unrealistic images of women, he explained, "I do not create a woman, I make a picture." In the painting “Purple Robe and Anemones” Matisse created a room with oversized yellow and red stripes on one side of the wall and wavy gray lines on the other. He flattened the model's body and distorted its shape, making it seem a part of the two-dimensional canvas, her head and hands appear to be the only substantial parts of her body. While her left hand rests upon her knee, her legs and feet cannot be seen and leads one to believe that they are tucked back under her robe to the left of her. The floral forms on the model’s green skirt recall the ornament on the green table. They wavy lines on the wall seem to rhyme with the undulating lines of the opening of the robe and the curving outline of the pewter jug. He tends to spread the yellow from the walls out to the model’s hair and the yellowish fruit on the table. Despite their placement in space, the buttons on the robe, the beads on the necklace, and the black centers of the anemones are joined in a allover pattern of black dots. I choose Matisse’s work to do my paper on because I respect his work and his different styles. I choose the “Purple Robe and Anemones” because I like how Matisse used different shapes, colors, and textures to create aesthetic order. In the previous portions of the paper I discussed the “Purple Robe and Anemones” that appears in the Cone Collection at the Baltimor...
