Harmony in Red (also called La Desserte)

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.

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