Interior with Phonograph, 1924 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.

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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 Interior with Phonograph is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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In Mediation - Interior with Phonograph the viewer is ushered across a boldly striped tablecloth into an intimate yet expansive domestic theatre. Foremost sits a shallow brass tray, its cool sheen contrasting with the spiky warmth of a pineapple, a scattering of lemons, an orange rolling to the edge, and a tiny faience figurine that punctuates the still life with whimsical scale. A slender vase of pastel flowers interrupts the centre like a pause in conversation. Behind, ochre curtains part to reveal a nested chamber hung with patterned textiles, while a black-rimmed window opens onto the pink façades and lilac mountains of Nice. To the right, the curved bell of a phonograph crowns a cabinet, its dark silhouette anchoring the composition. Each object is carefully positioned, yet the overall sensation is one of effortless improvisation.

Colour, here, is the instrument that both orchestrates and destabilises space. Matisse deploys saturated reds and golds to propel the foreground forward, while powder blues and mauves cool the receding plane beyond the window. The stripes of the cloth, viridian reflections on the tray, and the embroidered vitality of the rug form a counter-rhythm of warm and cool that keeps the eye in perpetual motion. Although the hues are intense, they are never overbearing - instead, they radiate a calibrated heat that evokes the Mediterranean light filtered through voile curtains and shuttered glass. The palette is neither descriptive nor symbolic; it is experiential, guiding perception rather than dictating meaning.

Brushwork, typically loose but never casual, oscillates between the declarative and the suggestive. The pineapple is rendered with swift hatchings that mimic its prickly surface, while the lemons are barely modelled, almost dissolving into the tabletop’s cadence. The phonograph and window frames acquire solidity through economical draughtsmanship, yet even these harder notes are softened by layers of translucent paint. Matisse tests the elasticity of pictorial depth: lines converge towards the window, the striped table tilts upward, and the curtain diagonal bisects the rectangle, creating a shallow but elastic arena in which every element touches or echoes another. This compositional lattice allows pattern to become structure, and structure to masquerade as ornament.

Painted during the artist’s so-called Nice period, the canvas synthesises his fascination with Islamic decorative arts, glimpses of Andalusian courtyards, and the languid tempo of the Côte d’Azur. The interior is less a private retreat than a mental landscape where memory, travel, and sensation intersect. Even the small self-portrait reflected in the distant mirror reminds us that the painter is both inhabitant and observer, mediating between lived space and painted fiction. In 1924, after the dislocations of the Great War, such cultivated serenity constituted its own radical gesture - an assertion that pleasure, clarity, and visual harmony could still be pursued with intellectual rigour. The result is a meditation not on stillness but on the ceaseless dialogue between eye, mind, and the tangible world.