Boy with Butterfly Net

Henri Matisse

Oil on canvas

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Painted in 1907, Boy with Butterfly Net depicts a young boy standing frontally, holding a butterfly net with both hands against a backdrop of bold blues and greens suggesting sky and open field. Matisse renders the figure with simplified forms and an expressive, non-naturalistic palette, hallmarks of his Fauvist practice at this period in his career. The boy's reddish hair, simple attire, and composed stance are treated with broad, confident brushwork that subordinates descriptive detail to color and mood. As a rare figurative genre subject within Matisse's oeuvre, the painting exemplifies his capacity to charge an everyday scene with formal and chromatic intensity.