Henri Matisse Print – The Blue Window (1913)

The Blue Window (1913) by Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse's The Blue Window (1913) is an extraordinary modern interior in which the distinction between a room, a window and the landscape beyond almost disappears beneath a remarkable harmony of blue. Painted at Issy-les-Moulineaux during one of the most experimental periods of Matisse's career, the work transforms an everyday bedroom view into an exploration of colour, space and perception.

Available as a Henri Matisse fine art print, framed print or canvas wall art, The Blue Window combines saturated blue, cool green, yellow and touches of red in a composition that feels remarkably contemporary more than a century after it was painted.

A View from Matisse's Home at Issy-les-Moulineaux

The Blue Window was painted during the summer of 1913 at Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, where Matisse had established both a family home and a separate studio.

The view is surprisingly personal. Matisse painted it from the second-floor bedroom he shared with his wife, Amélie.

The foreground represents Amélie Matisse's dressing table. Beyond it, the open window reveals trees surrounding the artist's studio building on the neighbouring property.

The studio's distinctive pitched roof and chimney can be seen through the window, although Matisse has transformed them through colour rather than attempting a conventionally realistic representation.

This makes the painting particularly important within his career: The Blue Window is the only known painting in which Matisse depicted the exterior of his Issy studio.

Inside and Outside Become One

At first glance, The Blue Window appears to be a straightforward interior looking through a window towards a garden.

Look more closely and conventional space begins to dissolve.

The dressing table is blue. The wall is blue. The sky is blue. Trees outside are also transformed into related blue and green forms.

Instead of strongly separating the bedroom from the landscape, Matisse connects the two through colour.

The result is a composition in which inside and outside appear to occupy almost the same pictorial plane.

The yellow studio building beyond the window provides an important contrast, while yellow objects on the dressing table create a visual connection between the distant architecture and the immediate foreground.

Everything is linked.

The bedroom, garden, studio and objects on the table become parts of one carefully balanced colour structure.

The Blue Window and Matisse's Radical Use of Colour

By 1913, Matisse had moved far beyond the explosive brushwork of his earlier Fauvist paintings, yet the revolutionary lessons of Fauvism remained fundamental to his art.

Colour did not need to reproduce the appearance of the physical world.

It could instead organise the painting.

In The Blue Window, blue performs several functions simultaneously. It describes the room, joins foreground and background, creates atmosphere and reduces conventional depth.

The result demonstrates why Matisse's use of colour was far more sophisticated than simply choosing unusually bright hues.

Each colour exists in relation to everything around it.

Cool blues and greens dominate the composition, while yellow provides warmth and visual emphasis. Small areas of red become unusually powerful because they are surrounded by cooler tones.

The Claude Mirror

One particularly fascinating object appears at the lower right of the painting: a small grey surface surrounded by red.

This has been identified as a Claude mirror, a slightly convex tinted mirror traditionally used by artists to simplify a landscape into broad tonal relationships.

Its inclusion is especially appropriate in a painting concerned with transforming an observed view into simplified colour and form.

A Painting Matisse Reworked Repeatedly

The apparent simplicity of The Blue Window conceals an intensive working process.

Technical examination of the painting has shown that Matisse altered the composition substantially while developing it.

X-ray and infrared examination reveal earlier branches and leaf shapes beneath the final surface, particularly in the upper-right area of the painting.

Other forms were shifted or removed.

Matisse also scraped through layers of paint in areas such as the cloud, exposing colours beneath and creating an unusually luminous surface containing traces of pink, blue and green.

In places he incised lines directly into the wet or partially dried paint.

These changes reveal that the apparent clarity of the finished image was achieved through careful revision rather than spontaneous simplification.

The Blue Window and Matisse's Experimental 1910s

The Blue Window belongs to a particularly important period in Matisse's career.

During the years surrounding 1913, his paintings became increasingly concerned with structure, flattened space and simplification.

Matisse was working in a Parisian art world transformed by Cubism and by the experiments of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Although Matisse did not become a Cubist, he responded seriously to many of the same questions concerning pictorial structure and the relationship between three-dimensional reality and the flat surface of a painting.

This resulted in some of his most radical works, including The Red Studio, View of Notre-Dame, French Window at Collioure and The Piano Lesson.

The Blue Window belongs naturally within this sequence.

The objects remain recognisable, but the painting increasingly operates as an arrangement of coloured shapes.

A Connection with The Red Studio

The studio visible through the window is particularly significant because it is the same studio environment associated with one of Matisse's greatest paintings, The Red Studio.

Matisse had constructed the purpose-built studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux several years earlier.

In The Red Studio, he represented its interior as an extraordinary field of saturated red.

In The Blue Window, painted from the adjoining house, we encounter the studio from outside.

The two works therefore provide remarkably different perspectives on an environment that played a central role in Matisse's artistic development.

The Remarkable History of The Blue Window

The painting also has an important twentieth-century provenance.

In 1913, the same year it was painted, Karl Ernst Osthaus acquired The Blue Window for the Folkwang Museum in Germany.

The painting later entered the collection of the Folkwang Museum in Essen.

In 1937, however, the Nazi authorities removed it from the museum as part of their campaign against so-called “degenerate art”.

The work was formally seized by the German state and subsequently passed through the art trade.

It reached New York through the Buchholz Gallery and was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1939 through the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund.

Today The Blue Window remains part of MoMA's permanent collection and is recognised as an important work from Matisse's experimental period.

Original Artwork Details

• Artist: Henri Matisse (1869–1954)
• Title: The Blue Window
• French artist: Henri Matisse
• Date: Summer 1913
• Place painted: Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 130.8 × 90.5 cm (51½ × 35⅝ inches)
• Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Credit: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund
• MoMA object number: 273.1939

About Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, in 1869 and became one of the defining artists of twentieth-century modernism.

After initially training in law, Matisse turned to painting and studied in Paris, eventually working under Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts.

His breakthrough came during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Working alongside artists including André Derain, Matisse began using increasingly intense and non-naturalistic colour. Paintings shown at the 1905 Salon d'Automne contributed to the emergence of Fauvism, the movement with which he became most closely associated during his early career.

Matisse never remained confined to Fauvism.

His subsequent career encompassed decorative interiors, monumental figures, still lifes, portraits, increasingly experimental paintings during the 1910s, Mediterranean subjects and finally the remarkable paper cut-outs of his later years.

Across these very different periods, his persistent concerns remained colour, line, rhythm and the simplification of form.

Explore more works in GalleryThane's Henri Matisse prints collection.

Henri Matisse's Painting Style

Matisse's style changed repeatedly during his long career, but several characteristics appear again and again.

Colour as Structure

Rather than using colour simply to describe objects, Matisse frequently used it to construct the entire composition.

Simplification

Matisse progressively reduced figures, objects and spaces to essential shapes without abandoning their visual identity.

Flattened Space

Traditional perspective often gives way to large coloured areas, tilted surfaces and patterns that draw background and foreground together.

Rhythmic Line

Contours frequently move through his compositions like arabesques, connecting objects and figures into a larger visual rhythm.

Continuous Experimentation

From Fauvist brushwork to austere wartime paintings and eventually paper cut-outs, Matisse repeatedly changed technique while continuing to investigate the relationship between colour, form and expression.

Displaying The Blue Window in Your Home

A The Blue Window print by Henri Matisse is particularly effective in interiors where colour is used selectively.

The dominant blue palette works naturally with white, cream, soft grey, putty and warm neutral walls. Natural oak and other pale timbers complement its modern palette particularly well, making it a strong choice for Scandinavian-inspired and contemporary interiors.

Its vertical format makes it well suited to narrower wall spaces, including beside a fireplace, above a console table, between windows or as part of a carefully arranged gallery wall.

The yellow, green and restrained red accents also provide opportunities to connect the artwork subtly with cushions, ceramics, furniture or other decorative elements without attempting to match every colour exactly.

For blue-led interiors, explore GalleryThane's wider collection of Blue Wall Art.

The Blue Window Prints, Framed Prints and Canvas Wall Art

GalleryThane offers The Blue Window by Henri Matisse in a wide range of sizes and presentation options.

Choose a fine art paper print for a traditional presentation, add a professionally made frame and mount for ready-to-display wall art, or select a canvas option for a more contemporary finish.

GalleryThane prints and frames its artwork in-house using archival art stocks, pigment inks and carefully selected framing materials.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Henri Matisse paint The Blue Window?

Matisse painted The Blue Window during the summer of 1913 at Issy-les-Moulineaux outside Paris.

Where was The Blue Window painted?

It was painted from the second-floor bedroom of Henri and Amélie Matisse's home at Issy-les-Moulineaux. The view through the window looks towards Matisse's separate studio building on the adjoining property.

What does The Blue Window show?

The foreground shows Amélie Matisse's dressing table, while the window beyond reveals trees and the distinctive roof and chimney of Matisse's studio.

Why is The Blue Window so blue?

Matisse was not attempting to reproduce natural colour literally. Blue is used across the wall, dressing table, sky and landscape to unite the interior and exterior into a single pictorial structure.

Is The Blue Window a Fauvist painting?

It was painted in 1913, several years after the concentrated Fauvist period of approximately 1905–07. Nevertheless, Matisse's Fauvist discovery that colour could operate independently from natural appearance remained fundamental to the work.

Is the building outside the window Matisse's studio?

Yes. The building visible among the trees is Matisse's studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux. The painting is particularly unusual because it is the only work in which he depicted the exterior of this studio.

What is the small grey object in The Blue Window?

The grey rectangular object framed in red at the lower right has been identified as a Claude mirror, a tinted convex mirror historically used by artists to simplify the colours and tonal relationships of a landscape.

Did Matisse alter The Blue Window while painting it?

Yes. Technical examination has revealed numerous revisions. Branches and foliage were altered, shapes were moved, and Matisse scraped through paint layers and incised lines into the surface while developing the final composition.

What medium did Matisse use for The Blue Window?

The original painting is oil on canvas.

How large is the original The Blue Window?

The original measures approximately 130.8 × 90.5 cm, or 51½ × 35⅝ inches.

Where is the original The Blue Window?

The original belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it entered the collection in 1939 through the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund.

What happened to The Blue Window during Nazi rule?

The painting had belonged to the Folkwang Museum in Germany. In 1937 it was removed by the Nazi authorities as so-called “degenerate art” and subsequently seized by the German state before eventually reaching the United States.

When did MoMA acquire The Blue Window?

The Museum of Modern Art acquired the painting on 13 April 1939 through the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund.

What colours work well with a The Blue Window print?

Its blue, turquoise, green and yellow palette works particularly well with white, cream, putty, pale grey, natural timber, navy and restrained yellow accents.

Is The Blue Window suitable for a modern interior?

Yes. Its simplified shapes, dominant blue palette and flattened composition give the painting a remarkably modern appearance. It works especially well within contemporary, Scandinavian-inspired and mid-century interiors.

Can I buy The Blue Window as a framed print?

Yes. GalleryThane offers The Blue Window as a fine art print with framing options, as well as canvas formats in a range of sizes.

All orders for unframed fine art prints and original paintings are dispatched within 2 working days of receipt of payment.

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