Artwork of the day

Henri Matisse, Woman with a hat, 1905, oil on canvas, San Francisco Museum of Art

The 20th century saw a radical change in the way art was created and perceived. The beginnings can be found in the Impressionist movement of the second half of the 19th century and continued in the early 20th with a group of artists called Fauves.


This portrait of Matisse's wife in a parade of intense colours provoked the anger of the conservative Parisian society in the Salon d'Automne of 1905 like the Impressionist paintings had done five decades earlier. This painting like all of Matisse's fauvist work displays influence from Impressionism but takes it one step further in terms of technique and colouring.