Woman with a Hat
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| Artist | Henri Matisse |
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| Year | 1905 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 79.4 cm × 59.7 cm (31 1/4 in × 23 1/2 in) |
| Location | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
Woman with a Hat (La femme au chapeau) is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905.
It is believed that the woman in the painting was Matisse’s wife, Amelie.
It was exhibited with the work of other artists, now known as “Fauves” at the 1905 Salon d’Automne. Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase “Donatello au milieu des fauves!” (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. The pictures gained considerable condemnation, such as “A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public” from the critic Camille Mauclair, but also some favourable attention. The oil painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, which was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein: this had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was suffering demoralisation from the bad reception of his work. Gertrude and Leo’s sister-in law Sarah Stein [married to the elder brother Michael] claimed to have been the original purchaser of this painting, not Gertrude (Leo did not like the oil painting at first). One can see it in photographs of Sarah and Michael’s home on Rue Madame. It was a centerpiece in Sarah’s home in Palo Alto, CA for many years. Sarah Stein later sold the oil painting to her friend Elise Haas who donated it to SFMOMA.
Henri Matisse
| Henri Matisse | |
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 Photo of Henri Matisse by Carl Van Vechten, 1933. |
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| Birth name | Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse |
| Born | 31 December 1869 (1869-12-31) Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord |
| Died | 3 November 1954 (1954-11-04) (aged 84) Nice, Alpes-Maritimes |
| Nationality | French |
| Field | painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, collage |
| Training | Académie Julian, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Moreau |
| Movement | Fauvism, Modernism |
| Works | Woman with a Hat (Madame Matisse), 1905in museums:
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| Patrons | Gertrude Stein, Etta Cone, Claribel Cone, Michael and Sarah Stein, Albert C. Barnes |
| Influenced by | John Peter Russell, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Signac |
| Influenced | Hans Hofmann, David Hockney, Tom Wesselmann |
Henri Matisse (French pronunciation: 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
