Matisse: Landscape at Collioure and Stravinsky’s The Firebird

Renée Murphy

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a French painter whose work has been categorized as part of the Fauvist movement. Les Fauves, which means “wild beasts” in French, was a group of artists who used colors boldly and unapologetically. Art critics deemed this name as a means of insult, but the Fauvists embraced such a title and incorporated it into their identity as artists. Matisse painted his Landscape at Collioure in 1905 as a work of oil on canvas. His choice of daring colors places this work squarely in Fauvism, while his technique of short brushstrokes gives one the feeling of being in nature as he depicts a landscape of bushes, trees, etc. However, there is still a significant amount of canvas showing in his art, like silence in a piece of music, bringing light into the nature scene.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was commissioned to write music for The Firebird ballet in 1910, which was directed by Serge Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. In 1919, he created an orchestral suite on The Firebird for reasons of copyright and royalties. This work is centered on Stravinsky’s Russian Period, the period in the first third of his career, in which he turned to folk tunes as a form of Russian pride and identity. The Firebird is a programmatic work which tells the story of a Russian mythical creature, the Firebird, who possesses a healing quality. Prince Ivan Tsarevich is in love with a princess, and Kashchei, an enchantress, is holding Tsarevich’s 2 love captive. The Firebird ultimately makes it possible for Tsarevich to be with his lover. The work is for full orchestra.

I chose Matisse’s work because it spoke to me from the moment I entered Matisse’s collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. There was such variety in the styles of his works on display, but I was fascinated by this painting because of the way that Matisse uses color and texture to create a larger, cohesive work. The colors in this painting immediately made me think of Stravinsky’s orchestral works, and I debated whether to compare Matisse’s painting to his Rite of Spring or The Firebird. However, I saw something in the middle of Matisse’s painting that looked like a winged animal resting calmly in an almost god-like way, and I felt a strong connection to The Firebird. While Stravinsky’s Russian Period featured works that were inspired by Russian folk tunes, Matisse’s painting struck me as closely related to this concept, feeling as though he created this work in a time before paintbrushes existed and people used their hands, fingers, and other creative means to creatively illustrate the things around them.

Matisse uses color in an organized manner to bring cohesion to the varied shades that he features in the work. One can see the succession of blue on the righthand side of the canvas, mixed in with varying shades before opening up to a lighter shade of green and some purple on the bottom. This blue continues on the lefthand side of the canvas in a much darker tone, which brings the viewer’s attention to his use of contrast on this side of the canvas. With the light blue on the lefthand side of the canvas, Matisse contrasts his lightest and darkest colors in the work together in one corner of the painting. The top-middle of the work features a sunset, using orange and red in such a way that adds variety to the otherwise warm colors on the rest of the canvas. I like this way in which Matisse brings attention to the bird in the middle of the painting by way of orange, as well as his use of the purple footpath in the bottom-middle of the painting that leads one’s eyes to the bird. Matisse’s work also makes use of natural light in the forest as well as in real life. By choosing to use the canvas’s whiteness as the base of the work, he conveys a light-colored environment that affects the entire shade of the work. In nature, this would translate to trees being slightly spaced apart to allow the sun to sneak through its leaves and branches. In such a way, the floor of the forest is fed with natural light and rainwater, and trees can flourish healthily and naturally. In Matisse’s sunset in the painting, the trees make way for the sun to set its healing rays onto the resting bird. The ground, covered in different colors, suggests a healthy ground in which different plants, fruits, and creates live and thrive.

I interpreted Matisse’s usage of color groups similarly to the way in which Stravinsky orchestrates The Firebird. His contrast of colors made me think of the percussion section with the sun in the middle of the work. I like the way in which the percussion is an ever-present force in the programmatic work. I envisioned the harp part to be the colorful path leading one’s eyes to the bird because of the way in which the harp adds to the orchestration in subtle ways, such that one notices the harp’s shimmering tone but may not be aware that the harpist is indeed playing. Similarly, the brass are the blue shades in the work, warm at times and starkly cooler. The very light shades of blue in the work, almost white, are those cool moments in which the brass take on a powerful voice while withholding emotion. The greenery in the work is certainly the strings, whose voices are the grass and shrubbery that saturate the work with color and vibrancy. Theirs is the voice that serves as a home for all other animals to live.

In general, Matisse’s usage of paint is sparse in this work. While Stravinsky utilizes a full orchestra for The Firebird, the work is spread out into many movements which offer different changes of mood and an opportunity for listeners to process and digest what they are experiencing. However, Matisse achieves this end by using strokes in different directions and leaving much of the canvas blank or sparse. Doing so allows the colors to stand out against a white backdrop and brings the viewer’s attention to the vivid colors in the work. This work feels like the best example of “less is more.” If Matisse had chosen to explore different colors in the background, perhaps he could have enveloped the entire scene in a sunset. However, by placing the forest against a white background, Matisse provides the opportunity for the work to shine in an otherworldly place, in a land where the surroundings far from matter compared with what is directly on the canvas. This focus on the image is particularly similar to Stravinsky’s The Firebird in the way that he provides color to instrumental solos to tell the story of a mystical creature who sought to do good in a far-off land.

Stravinsky’s Infernal Dance, a movement in The Firebird, is particularly close to this interpretation because of his usage of contrasting colors, dynamics, and instruments. The opening of the movement begins with a sforzando chord featuring brass, percussion, and the rest of the ensemble. This is then contrasted with timpani and a dramatic trombone solo. The dynamic level there is significantly less compared to that of the opening of chord of the movement. Such a difference in dynamics can create what feel like “holes” in the sound, and I feel that this relates closely to what Matisse achieves in his work.

There in a certain grace to the bird in Matisse’s painting that made me think of the movement titled Supplication of the Firebird. The swaying lines of the oboe and the harp’s calm triplet rhythm made me picture a large bird in a forest. These sweeping phrases and long lines resemble the strokes in Matisse’s painting and the contrast that they offer to the short chords, such as those in the Infernal Dance. It is rare to encounter such large birds in nature, but this rarity makes it both mystical and magical. Matisse adds colors to the work in such a way that illuminates the characteristics of each shade of color.

I made a strong connection between Matisse and Stravinsky because of the way in which Matisse’s work looks like staccato rhythms across the canvas. I loved the way in which these individual lines (or notes) created larger phrases that projected meaningful objects and ideas. Matisse’s use of shapes makes the work exceptionally imaginative while still being clear on what it is depicting. One can imagine berries or other varieties of plants on the bottom of the painting, juxtaposed with bushes and other greenery.

Matisse and Stravinsky’s masterpieces offer points of comparison that reveals art to be connected as a concept that expresses emotion and portrays particular events. Even though the two works were created just years apart from one another, it is interesting to consider the ways in which they differ, having been written in such different parts of the world by artists who possessed different values, forms of training, and ideals that they wished to spread forth. In my view, these two works serve to ignite the power and meaning behind a magical bird in the middle of a magical forest, serving others and resting peacefully amongst trees under a burning sunset of fire and courage.

“Matisse's audacious experimentation with form and color was inseparable from his dedication to an art of harmonious expression, an ambition lost on most of his contemporary viewers. The earliest works in this gallery, small paintings composed of bold strokes of vibrant color made in 1904 and 1905, are among those that led angry critics to label him and his colleagues "les Fauves" – wild beasts.

Brilliant color would nonetheless continue to be one of Matisse's most important resources, and by 1909 he began to construct compositions featuring flat expanses of vivid tones that saturate the paintings' surfaces. Matisse radically abbreviated the descriptive elements of his subject matter, sacrificing detail to the overall rhythm and unity of the composition. In his 1908 essay "Notes of a Painter," he wrote that he dreamed of "an art of balance, or purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter." Matisse remains one of the great joy-givers of the twentieth century.”

Works Cited

Schwarm, Betsy. "The Firebird". Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Feb. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Firebird. Accessed 22 October 2022.

Copyright © 2023 Renée Murphy