The Dining Table (1896-1897)
by Henri Matisse
The Dining Table, an early oil painting by Matisse, is an everyday scene of a maid leaning over a set dinner table, arranging flowers in a vase. The food on the table is mostly fruit, and the array of dessert dishes, carafes, and crystal glasses combine to create a still life to which the artist has devoted all his skill. The essential Matisse is already there—in the white of the tablecloth, which is bright but heavily shaded, in the intensity of the splashes of orange, and in the carefully studied hues of the shadows. It is there in the “Modernist” manner, à la Degas.
