Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose

Henri Matisse

Oil on canvas

State Hermitage Museum

Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose (Cowslips on Blue and Pink Cloth) is an oil on canvas painted by Henri Matisse in the spring of 1911, depicting a vase of cowslip flowers set against richly patterned textiles in bold blues and pinks. The composition belongs to an extended experimental series in which Matisse explored the interplay of flowers or fruit with decorative fabrics, deploying flat, hard-edged expanses of pure colour and a radically simplified pictorial space characteristic of his Fauvist and post-Fauvist practice. Matisse was a leading figure of twentieth-century modernism, whose command of expressive colour and draughtsmanship placed him alongside Picasso and Duchamp as one of the defining artists of the era. The work is a companion to the large studio panel Atelier rose, painted at the same moment, and reflects Matisse's sustained investigation into the relationship between decoration and pictorial structure.