#garden

They say he was an anarchist, and that painting people who worked with their hands was part of the politics — not just a pretty subject but a point being made.

Apparently he painted the same pond in his own garden something like two hundred times. By this point his eyesight was going — cataracts — and people still argue about how much that's doing to the colours.

They say this is Matisse's own garden outside Paris, with what's said to be his daughter and a friend having tea — that flat, saturated color was already becoming his signature.