Wednesday Lecture - Henri Matisse: The Green Stripe (Portrait of Madame Matisse)

This informal portrait of the artist’s wife, painted in 1902, begins an adventure with colour that would last all of Matisse’s life. Is the choice of colour, where the sitter’s face is bisected with a line of green, purely arbitrary, decorative or a logical development from the colour-theories of the Impressionists? Consider this pivotal work in the context of Matisse’s career, but also explore the larger sub-genre of ‘artist’s wife’ paintings and what they might mean.