What Were Henri Matisse’s Composition Techniques?

Matisse was a man worthy of Picasso’s rivalry, a man so close to genius that even the greatest artists felt a need to compete. Versatility, brilliance, and pure obsession combined to create the artist Henri Matisse. He was a man who refused to cease creating his artwork. Even when ill health meant he would need to spend more time in bed, he still found a way to continue making his art. It was a drive that led to a beautiful body of work.

The Dinner Table is a painting that reveals Matisse’s technical skill. Created in a realistic style, it shows the bedrock of traditional skills that Matisse had. Through his journey through many styles and techniques, he would apply that education to something more experimental and groundbreaking. This image includes aspects of still life, such as the various fruits and the bottles on the table. They become shapes that the artist can position. This means that the structure of the image can be controlled. Notice how the fruit bowls are placed diagonally on one side of the table. They move the viewer’s focus to the right of the canvas. The woman is the main focal point.

The diagram above simplifies the composition. Notice how the shape of the woman and the flowers are different from the canvas’s other parts. It guides your eyes to the part of the image. The structure of everything is mainly basic shapes. The diagram shows how the circles dominate the lower part of the image. The upper part of the image consists primarily of vertical and horizontal lines. Then, verticals and circles are mixed in the space around the woman. This gives the figure the main focus. The viewers’ eyes are guided towards her. It’s a balanced composition with a clear focus.

The Red Room

In Harmony in Red, Matisse returned to the same subject matter but created a piece in a completely different style. Fauvism was a style that emphasized vibrant colors. The image is mainly red, which could be seen as an imbalance in the composition. Still, this image can also be seen as a celebration of red. Matisse made this red the main focal point. The color stands out more since the artist included its complementary color, green. It’s a shift in what can be considered the main focal point in a painting. In realistic images, it has often been something structural, such as a person. However, in Fauvist artworks, the artists were questioning that approach.

The painting is challenging in its color, but Matisse calmed those concerns by including familiar figurative elements that you’d find in a more realistic painting. There is also something interesting in how the blue is positioned. There are four blue baskets of flowers. In the diagram above, their positioning is indicated by the blue box. This would often highlight a focal point. Only a tiny part of the woman’s body is in that area. In this composition, it is used to emphasize that she isn’t the focal point. The blue box is similar in shape to the top of the seat in the bottom left corner. Having a basic shape in a composition’s structure and then repeating it in the details can bring the elements of a painting together more successfully.

Reclining Nude was created using charcoal on paper. The nature of charcoal forces an artist to strip away color and explore tone and structure. Matisse became famous for his masterful use of color. His understanding developed from years of experimenting with various levels of color. Looking at his artworks, you can see each artistic obsession explored through the imagery he created. This makes his work highly educational for other artists.

The woman’s face is the focal point of this work. The curve of her body acts as a leading line towards the face. That part of the structure is reinforced by the parallel diagonal line. This is highlighted in blue on the diagram. The viewer’s eyes move towards the focal point in the upper left. The structure of her elbows and the pillows surrounding her point away from her face. In the diagram, this is highlighted by the arrows. This gives the structure width in that area and balances the fact that her lower body is wider because of the figure’s positioning. It’s a difficult perspective that Matisse chose, but he had the skill to balance it. All those angles pointing away from the face can be seen as uniting, which gives it a triangular structure.

Woman with a Hat

Woman with a Hat is a significant piece from Matisse’s Fauvist period. It is an excellent example of that artistic movement. In this image, Matisse used the background to balance the colors used in the figure. They seem like random patches of color, but their positioning is deliberate. The green in the top left balances the green in the lower right. On the lower part of the canvas, the blue is mainly on the right, so he balances it with the patch of blue behind her neck. There is more blue on the upper part of the canvas, but a portrait format canvas can take more elements in the upper part of the image as opposed to the lower part of the image. The red of the hair is the color that guides the viewer’s focus to the face.

The diagram above simplifies the painting into its basic structure. The face is the focal point, and it is framed by two shapes that are highlighted in blue. They both curve towards the focal point. In the drawing Reclining Nude, Matisse used shapes that were pointed away from the focal point. In this image, he does the reverse. Both images show that both techniques work well. The shapes also add a level of partial symmetry to the structure. Any addition of symmetry will automatically bring more balance. The shapes resemble the shape of leaves. It helps to add basic shapes to the structure of a composition. Often, these are triangles, squares, and circles. The leaf shape is also something that could be considered a basic shape. It is familiar and immediately recognizable and it works well as a structural element within a composition.

Blue Nude II is one of Matisse’s most famous images. It comes from his series of cut-outs. It’s a straightforward process where he would use scissors to cut out shapes from a sheet of color. It was bold and experimental, and in times of poor health, it was something he could do while he lay in bed. His cut-outs were rooted in Fauvism because they show color and structure as complete equals in composition. The work from this period is groundbreaking, but it’s essential to see Matisse’s journey up to this point. His composition and color skills are channeled through this simplistic technique. It leads to simplistic images that are also masterful in terms of composition.

The diagram above highlights some key aspects of the composition of Blue Nude II. The orange color highlights leaf shapes that are part of this composition. It’s a structural element that we saw in Woman with a Hat. The same technique is used here. Green is used to identify a narrow leaf shape that is also part of the structure. The legs have a triangular structure. There is an angular structure in the lower left, but it’s balanced by the circular shapes in the upper right. In The Dinner Table, Matisse structured his composition as circles at the bottom and angles at the top. In this image, he used angles on the lower left and circles on the upper right. He took the composition techniques he had used for years and then created an image with a beautiful level of simplicity.

The Parakeet and the Mermaid is another work from Matisse’s cut-out period. The parakeet mermaid can be identified as the two blue shapes that are bolder and different from the others. Even with little detail, the parakeet is immediately recognizable as a bird. The mermaid has a higher level of abstraction. At first, the positioning of the shapes seems random in terms of composition, but it isn’t. The image repeats similar shapes, and there is a pattern to it, but there isn’t a sequence in the placement of colors. Repetition always adds complexity.

The diagram shows us how the colors are positioned. Let’s look at the pink shapes. On the left side of the image, there are four pink shapes. When we draw a line from one to the other, it creates a box around the parakeet. On the right of the image, there are five pink shapes. When we join them together, they form a box around the mermaid. That color is used to bring your eyes to the focal points. The green is then used to unite both sides of the picture together. There is a green shape in an almost central position. The diagram has lines from that shape to the other green shapes. From the positioning of the lines, you can see that green is present across the piece. However, it is mainly positioned in the lower half of the image. This is reminiscent of a traditional landscape with a field of green. This is a sophisticated composition with clear focus points.