Henry Matisse had all the critics and public buzzing when he revealed the painting of his wife titled "Green Stripe". Such innovation and daring use of color! Matisse was the talk of the town and he was loving it. He hadn't expected this reaction from the critics.
They raved and raved. To place that green stripe down the center of Amélie Matisse's face like that seemed to act as an artificial shadow line and divided the face in the conventional portraiture style. A first. They loved it and a growing crowd gathered around it as the night of the opening went on.
He couldn't believe it. It was just some quick, "goofing around" kind of study he did before a lunch break one day and decided to show it anyway. What the heck. Can't hurt. At this point, the bills were piling up and he was under an increased amount of stress. "Get all that work out there!", his wife said, "We got bills to pay".
But then Madame Matisse herself showed up late to the opening that night due to traffic. The room fell silent. Everyone could see that she actually did have a green stripe on her face. An odd birth mark that ran in the family. As the grumbling crowds slowly filtered out of the gallery you could hear Matisse at the back of the room nervously announcing that more Brie was on it's way. "And grapes! More Brie and grapes! Come Back! Hey! Hey". With sweat running down his reddened face he forced a smile and started doing an energetic tap dance best as he could muster.
1905 (165 Kb); Oil and tempera on canvas, 40.5 x 32.5 cm (15 7/8 x 12 7/8 in); Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
In his green stripe portrait of his wife, he has used color alone to describe the image. Her oval face is bisected with a slash of green and her coiffure, purpled and top-knotted, juts against a frame of three jostling colors. Her right side repeats the vividness of the intrusive green; on her left, the mauve and orange echo the colors of her dress. This is Matisse's version of the dress, his creative essay in harmony.
Matisse painted this unusual portrait of his wife in 1905. The green stripe down the center of Amélie Matisse's face acts as an artificial shadow line and divides the face in the conventional portraiture style, with a light and a dark side, Matisse divides the face chromatically, with a cool and warm side. The natural light is translated directly into colors and the highly visible brush strokes add to the sense of artistic drama