Le Bonheur de vivre, also called The Joy of Life

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FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

This monumental canvas, which once hung in the famous collection of Gertrude and Leo Stein, is one of the watershed paintings in the history of European modernism. When Matisse first exhibited it in Paris in 1906, audiences were shocked. The problem wasn't the subject; the theme of sensual arcadia, with figures dancing and making music in a natural setting, had been a standard for centuries. It was the execution—the bold colors, the jarring shifts in scale, and the distorted anatomies. As Gertrude Stein would later write, "Matisse painted Le Bonheur de vivre and created a new formula for color that would leave its mark on every painter of the period."

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