Le Luxe I

Three nude women occupy a coast of blue water, warm earth and dark hills. One stands at the left and looks down; another crouches at her feet; a third bends toward them with a bouquet. Henri Matisse made this large scene at Collioure in summer 1907 . Its familiar title, Le Luxe I , means Luxury I , but the painting offers no visible possessions or elegant room. It presents a pastoral idea of ease through bodies, open water and color. The Centre Pompidou owns the oil on canvas , about 210 × 138 centimetres , inventory AM 2586 P . ^[1]

There is a second painting called Le Luxe II in Copenhagen. The two are close in size and subject, but they are separate canvases made with different materials . The image here shows the first, textured oil version : visible strokes model pale bodies and shift through the blue shore. The later version, owned by Statens Museum for Kunst, uses distemper on canvas and more even color fields. Distinguishing them lets us discuss the actual work in front of us instead of treating both names as interchangeable labels for one picture. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

How do the three figures make a scene?

The standing woman on the left reaches nearly from top to bottom. Her body is the first strong vertical in the composition. She does not face us directly: her head turns and tips downward, bringing her attention to the crouched figure below. The lowered hands and angled shoulders make that relation visible without describing a specific story. Matisse gives her a pale, broad body outlined in places by dark strokes. She is both a recognizable figure and a large light shape set against the darker water and earth.

At the bottom, the second woman folds into a compact form. Yellow hair marks her bowed head; her arms and legs gather inward. Her rounded back makes a pale arc against the warm foreground. Compared with the standing figure's upright length, this body pulls the eye into a small, intense area near the left edge. The two figures nearly touch in the visual arrangement, but the painting does not spell out a ritual or a relationship. Their different poses are enough to make a quiet exchange of looking and bending.

The third woman approaches from the right across a brown-orange strip of land. One leg stretches back while her torso leans toward the bouquet she holds. The flowers are a small but bright knot among otherwise broad areas of skin, earth and water. They connect the right side to the pair at left: the viewer follows the offering gesture across the open middle of the picture. Yet it would be too definite to name her a servant or declare the standing woman a literal goddess. Centre Pompidou uses “beach Venus” and “lady-in-waiting” as questions in its interpretation, not as documented identities for models or characters. ^[1]

Each pose solves a compositional problem. The standing figure anchors one edge, the crouched figure fills the lower corner, and the leaning figure carries movement back toward them. The open water between their bodies remains important. It stops the three nudes from merging into one pale mass and allows the bouquet to punctuate the center. Matisse organizes a large canvas with a few gestures and intervals rather than a crowded narrative.

What does the coast contribute?

Broad blue-green water runs behind the figures. A pink bank lies farther back, while a dark headland pushes in from the right. Above, blue and violet marks make a restless sky. The coast is not painted as a measured map of Collioure. It supplies bands of color and changes of direction that hold the bodies together. The pink curve repeats the bend of the crouched woman's back; the dark hill gives weight opposite the standing figure. Land and figures are planned for one surface.

The foreground is warmer and more broken. Brown, ochre and orange strokes surround the kneeling woman and carry the right-hand figure toward the center. Her pale foot meets that darker ground sharply. The standing woman's light body is similarly set against water and hill, but its edges remain brushy. Matisse did not simply fill each shape with one uniform hue. Patches of pale blue, cream and warm pink pass through the bodies, making them feel worked in oil rather than cut from flat paper.

Centre Pompidou describes this first version as swiftly brushed, with simplified landscape and almost iridescent areas of color. The canvas still has a clear subject, but the color does not work only to imitate natural light. Blue can bind water to sky, while pale flesh stands out against both. Dark strokes around the standing figure and headland emphasize large contrasts. The painting asks the viewer to read a coast and an arrangement of color at the same time. ^[1]

Why is it called Luxury?

The title belongs to a tradition of pastoral and Golden Age scenes in which people appear at ease in nature. Centre Pompidou's teaching account connects Le Luxe I to that tradition and to Matisse's earlier Luxe, calme et volupté , a different painting from 1904–05 . It also links both titles to Baudelaire's poem Invitation to the Voyage . Those connections explain why “luxury” can mean an imagined state of freedom and pleasure rather than a display of valuable objects. They do not establish a single fixed meaning for each woman's action. ^[4]

The earlier Luxe, calme et volupté uses numerous small color units and a populated seaside setting. In Le Luxe I , Matisse reduces the company to three monumental figures and makes the bands of water and land simpler. The shared theme therefore reveals a change of method, not the repetition of one composition. He could revisit an imagined life outdoors while altering scale, handling and the relation between a person and the landscape.

Centre Pompidou also notes that Matisse had seen Tuscan frescoes in 1907 and made a full-size pencil study. Its teaching resource describes the use of a poncif , a perforated drawing used to transfer outlines to the canvas. Such preparation complicates any claim that the picture is merely a spontaneous outpouring of brushwork. Its forms were considered at a monumental scale even while the visible oil remains brisk and varied. The finished image holds planning and rapid paint together. ^{[1] [4]}

What changed in Le Luxe II?

Statens Museum for Kunst catalogues Le Luxe II as a separate work dated 1907–08 ; the Art Institute of Chicago's scholarly catalogue gives summer–fall 1907 for the same Copenhagen canvas. These dating ranges differ, so it is safest to call it the subsequent version without insisting on a precise month. Both records identify its material as distemper or glue paint on canvas, unlike the Pompidou oil. Their dimensions are very close, but the works are not literally the same size in every source measurement. ^{[2] [3]}

The second version keeps the three-figure arrangement while pushing toward broader, more even color. The standing body and coast become less textured by visible oil strokes. Centre Pompidou's teaching text sees in this change a stronger move toward decorative flatness. The comparison is useful because it makes the painter's choices specific. Matisse did not abandon the subject; he tested what would happen if the same large design were remade with another medium and a different surface rhythm. ^{[4] [2]}

The first version was shown at the 1907 Salon d'Automne under the historic title Le Luxe, esquisse . Centre Pompidou reports mixed responses: some critics called its forms abstract or unfinished, while others valued its decorative strength. The word “sketch” in that exhibition title and the existence of a second canvas do not make the Pompidou painting disappear into a mere preliminary note. It is a large, publicly exhibited work whose visibly textured surface lets us follow one solution to the three-figure composition. ^[1]

Look again from the bowed yellow head to the bouquet, then up to the standing face and out across the blue water. That circuit shows how the figures and coast cooperate without settling into a named myth. Le Luxe I makes an old pastoral subject new through scale, loose paint and a carefully balanced trio. The later Le Luxe II tests a more even surface. For another large painting of figures in an imagined natural setting, see Le Bonheur de vivre ; the paintings guide places both within Matisse's changing approach to color and form.