Sometimes paintings have a life of their own and the story of who and how they were commissioned, and where they traveled adds something to a student’s understanding of why we study them. Sometimes we imagine that a painting was instantly famous and placed as part of the art historical canon, and this may be true, but paintings often become famous because of who owned and who exhibits them today.
Henri Matisse painted Harmony in Red (also called La Desserte) in 1908 in Paris. His shows with the Fauves a few years earlier put him on the map with important collectors who could make an artist’s career. This painting was originally commissioned by a Russian art collector named Sergei Shchukin, who had been buying modern French art and was one of Matisse’s main supporters. Shchukin had a large collection of Matisse’s paintings in his home in Moscow and even turned some of the rooms into small private galleries.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Shchukin’s collection was taken by the Soviet state. His house and all the artwork in it were turned into a public museum. Harmony in Red became part of that state-owned collection. Today, it’s in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was moved there along with other works from Shchukin’s collection when the Soviet government restructured how art was stored and displayed.
The painting’s monumental reputation is somewhat matched to its physical size. It is around 180 by 200 centimeters, which is about 6 feet by 6.5 feet. Like the Green Stripe, it is a painting of an everyday scene, although this is less of a portrait, however, the real subject matter is a combination of color and this time pattern.
When Matisse first painted the scene, he called it Harmony in Blue, but he changed the whole background to red after it was done. It’s unclear why he changed it, but the version we know today is the red one. The painting shows a room with a woman setting a table. There’s a window or possibly a painting within the painting, and the entire surface is covered in a pattern that blends the wall and the table.
I have my own theory about this. It’s possible that Harmony in Red by Henri Matisse is connected in some way to changes in fabric design and interior decoration that came with industrialization. By 1908, when Matisse painted it, mass production had already made patterned textiles more common and affordable. Factories could print designs on cloth quickly, and more people were using these fabrics in their homes—for tablecloths, curtains, and wallpaper.
Earlier artists like some of the Impressionists painted these new interior spaces, showing how patterns and decorations were becoming part of everyday life. This was also a time when leaders like Queen Victoria were encouraging people to use more “tasteful” patterns in their homes. At world’s fairs, like the ones where Joseph Paxton’s glass building was shown, countries displayed new industrial products, including fabric and furniture, and tried to set style trends.
In Harmony in Red, Matisse fills almost the entire surface with one pattern that covers both the wall and the table. The shapes are decorative, like something you’d see on printed fabric. He flattens the space and uses the same pattern across different surfaces, which blurs the line between furniture and background. This kind of treatment might reflect how printed designs had become part of everyday visual life, especially in the home.
While there’s no clear proof that Matisse was directly thinking about industrial textile production, he was living in a time when patterns, color, and decoration were all changing because of it. Painters were seeing these changes and responding in different ways. Harmony in Red could be one way Matisse showed that shift—not by copying a factory product, but by using similar decorative ideas in a painting.
Some art historians have looked at the updated color in Harmony in Red—originally planned as Harmony in Blue—and suggested that Matisse changed it to red to create a stronger sense of unity and visual impact across the whole surface. The red background makes the patterns and objects blend together instead of standing apart. This shift away from naturalistic space toward something more decorative and flat was unusual at the time and showed how Matisse was thinking differently about what a painting could do.
The color doesn’t follow traditional rules of light or shading. Instead, it covers nearly the entire canvas in a flat, even red, with dark blue curving lines for the pattern. This makes the room seem less like a realistic space and more like a flat surface filled with decoration. Some art historians think Matisse was influenced by things like Islamic tilework, Japanese prints, or other non-Western art forms where flatness and pattern were important. These kinds of images were becoming more available in Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s because of global trade and colonial expansion.
The interaction between the red color and the repeated pattern has also been described as a way of making the viewer more aware of the painting as a surface, rather than a window into a 3D space. This idea was different from most European painting up to that point, which usually tried to create depth and realism.
Art historians often consider Harmony in Red a groundbreaking work because it challenges those older traditions. It puts color and design at the center, not story or illusion. It also helped lay the groundwork for later art movements like Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, which took these ideas even further. Matisse’s painting showed that you could use bold color and decoration in a serious, large-scale artwork—not just in crafts or design.
The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown and Icarus were both made by Henri Matisse in 1947 as part of a project called Jazz. This series included 20 color prints and was published by the art dealer Tériade (whose real name was Stratis Eleftheriades). He was a major figure in publishing limited-edition art books in mid-20th century France. Tériade asked Matisse to create the series, and it was printed in Paris by Éditions Verve.
Matisse made Jazz after he had gone through major surgery in 1941 for abdominal cancer. After that, he used a wheelchair and couldn't paint the way he used to. Instead, he began working with paper cut-outs, a method he called gouaches découpées—which means painted paper cut and arranged into shapes. These works were then turned into prints using a process called pochoir, which is a hand-stenciling technique where each color is applied separately using stencils. It allowed for bright, solid colors, and each print was done with great care by craftspeople who specialized in that process.
The original Jazz portfolio was printed in an edition of 250 copies. Each book included handwritten-style text by Matisse alongside the prints. He had planned to write stories or commentary to go with each image, but instead, the text became more like loose notes about art and life. The series includes figures from circus, mythology, and theater, which were all subjects Matisse had explored earlier in his career.
This project was made during and just after World War II, when France was recovering from the war. The printing was delayed because of shortages of materials and the general disruption caused by the war. Even though Matisse was in poor health, he worked closely with assistants to arrange the cut-outs, and he supervised the printing process. His studio was in the south of France at this time, far from Paris, and he worked in a quiet, private setting.
Today, complete Jazz portfolios and individual plates like The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown and Icarus are held in many major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Their exact locations can vary depending on exhibitions and loans, but they’re considered part of many permanent collections.
In The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown and Icarus, from Henri Matisse’s Jazz series (1947), the figures and shapes don’t show a full story the way a painting from the Renaissance might, but they still use symbols that connect to older traditions—especially from mythology, performance, and storytelling.
In Icarus, Matisse shows a figure falling or floating with arms outstretched. The title connects it to the Greek myth of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun with wings made of feathers and wax. The wax melted, and he fell into the sea. It’s a myth that shows up a lot in European art and literature. The red shape near the figure’s chest has been described by some art historians as a symbolic heart or a wound, linking to the moment of Icarus’s fall. Other scholars see the red shape as just part of the design, not meant to look like a real heart or injury.
In The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown, the images come from the circus. Matisse was interested in performance and had seen circuses during his life. Horses and clowns were common subjects in French popular entertainment, especially in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The clown here may relate to the Pierrot figure from commedia dell’arte, an old style of theater that used costumes and set roles. The rider could be a reference to circus performers or equestrian shows. These were familiar in France, where street performers and traveling circuses were popular forms of entertainment. The symbols here don’t seem to form one full scene or narrative. They are more like parts from different acts, side by side on the same stage.
The cut-out style of the Jazz series adds to how the symbols are arranged. The shapes are bold and flat, almost like paper dolls or silhouettes. They aren’t placed in a deep space with backgrounds or settings. Instead, they float, with strong outlines and no shadows. This makes the symbols feel separated, but still part of the same visual rhythm. Some art historians think this organization relates to jazz music, where individual instruments play alone and also as a group. Matisse himself chose the title Jazz, and while the pictures don’t show musical scenes, the way the shapes move and interact might be a kind of visual version of rhythm and syncopation.
Different art historians have offered different takes on the meaning. Some link Icarus to ideas of war or human failure, since it was made just after World War II. Others say it’s about freedom or the risk that comes with creativity. In The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown, some scholars see a mix of joy and danger—the fun of the circus alongside the risk of falling, jumping, or getting hurt. But Matisse didn’t write detailed explanations of what each picture meant, so interpretations vary.
Overall, the symbols in Jazz don’t form one fixed message. They draw on older stories, performances, and visual traditions, but they are arranged in a new way. The images were created during a time when Matisse was working through illness and recovery, and the world was coming out of war. The use of circus and myth might reflect those conditions—both serious and playful, old and new, personal and public. The symbols are organized more by rhythm and color than by a set storyline, and that approach was unusual in art at the time.
