Two Young Girls in a Coral Interior, Blue Garden (Deux fillettes, fond corail, jardin bleu)

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FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

This work is currently on loan to the exhibition "Henri Matisse 1941-1954" at The Grand Palais, Paris, March 24 - July 26, 2026. From 1943 to 1949, Matisse lived at the Villa Le Rêve, a seaside estate in Vence, France. In 1947, he began working on a series of pictures known as the Vence Interiors, which includes a group of eight paintings representing two girls (a young English woman and her sister) reading. Matisse uses the same arrangement in each version: the girls are seated at a table covered with diverse objects, such as a book, a plate, and a bouquet of flowers, while behind them is a window through which an olive tree appears. Though the motif is similar in all the canvases of this subseries, Matisse varies the color chord from one painting to another, producing a totally different environment and atmosphere each time.

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