"La Villa Bleue à Nice", a Previously Unknown Work by Matisse


03/08/2022

This oil painting by Henri Matisse has never been on the market before. Long in a European collection, the work, which comes with its original support, is drawing interest from French, British and American collectors.



by Claire Papon

Henri Matisse (1869-1954), La Villa bleue à Nice (The Villa Blue in Nice), 1918, oil on canvas, 54 x 65.4 cm/21.26 x 25.74 in. © SUCCESSION H. MATISSE Estimate: €150,000/200,000
Matisse painted this landscape featuring a blue villa shortly after moving to Nice in 1917. The artist resided at the Beau Rivage Hotel on the Promenade des Anglais before renting an apartment in the building next door that he converted into a studio, where he painted his first brightly colored interiors and the view from his windows overlooking the sea. Light was not a revelation. It had already captured Matisse’s attention in Saint-Tropez in 1904, in Collioure the following year and in Morocco; but in Nice, he turned the rules of painting upside-down. "When I realized I would see this light every morning,” he wrote in May 1918, “I felt so unbelievingly happy. I decided not to leave Nice, and stayed there practically all my life."  Click here to read more