Still Life with Pascal's Pensées

Henri Matisse

Oil paint on canvas

Musée de l'Orangerie

Still Life with Pascal's Pensées is a 1924 oil on canvas painting by Henri Matisse, depicting a vase of brightly colored flowers set near a window, with a floral-patterned curtain through which natural light filters into the room. The visible copy of Blaise Pascal's Pensées resting among the objects introduces a literary and philosophical dimension unusual in the still life genre. Matisse, born in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, was a leading figure of Fauvism, celebrated for his bold use of color, expressive brushwork, and flattened pictorial space. The painting belongs to his celebrated Nice period of the 1920s, during which intimate domestic interiors and richly patterned still lifes became central to his practice.