Mediation - After the Bath, 1920 Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Henri Matisse also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Mediation - After the Bath is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

The scene unfolds in a hushed corner of a Nice hotel room: a woman, robed in pale cream and wrapped in a loosely knotted white turban, reclines in a bergère, her gaze drifting toward a shuttered window just beyond the frame. Beside her, a round table dressed in a tautly draped red-and-white striped cloth supports a blue-and-white porcelain vase blooming with poppies and anemones in scarlet, violet, and inky indigo. Behind, a mirror captures a fragmentary reflection of chair and wall, while tonal greys temper the animated decor. The quiet tilt of her head and the inward set of her hands lend the titular air of meditation.

Matisse moderates his celebrated Riviera brilliance here, favoring an unusually subdued palette. A veil of lilac-grey anchors the background, allowing the low-toned whites and creams of robe and turban to radiate softly rather than flare. Into this cool harmony he threads calculated shocks of colour: the cadmium stripes cascade with rhythmic insistence, while the florets punctuate the hush like brief exclamations. The result is neither sombre nor flamboyant; instead it is a poised chromatic equipoise that invites prolonged looking.

The artist’s handling is characteristically economical. Passages of thinly scrubbed paint permit the texture of the linen to breathe through, especially in the robe’s ample sleeves, suggesting fabric without fussing over every fold. Elsewhere, brisk loaded strokes shape the florid bouquet, each petal rendered with a single decisive mark. The striped cloth is laid down in confident verticals, yet a subtle wavering reveals the painter’s hand, enlivening what might have been a mechanical pattern. Such variance in touch, from feather-light scumbles to assertive bars of pigment, underscores Matisse’s conviction that sensation, not finish, governs perception.

Compositionally, the canvas is a study in calibrated tensions. Vertical stripes counter the figure’s languid diagonals; the oval of chair and the circular table echo one another, binding space. The model, set slightly off-centre, creates a gentle asymmetry that nudges the eye from her absorbed profile to the vibrant tablecloth, up the stem-like flowers, and back to her contemplative posture. Even the muted mirror, suggesting but not declaring depth, completes a subtle circuit that keeps the viewer perpetually returning to the silent sitter.

Painted barely two years after the Great War, this interior belongs to Matisse’s Nice period, when he exchanged Fauvist heat for measured luminosity. The decorative profusion recalls late nineteenth-century Orientalism, yet here the exotic is domesticated, serving an exploration of private reverie rather than spectacle. In a decade fascinated by jazz rhythms and cinematic velocity, Matisse offers instead a suspended moment - an invitation to linger within coloured silence, where stillness itself becomes the most modern gesture of all.