Odalisque with Raised Arms

1923 painting by Henri Matisse

Odalisque with Raised Arms

Artist| Henri Matisse
Year| 1923
Medium| Oil on canvas
Dimensions| 68 cm × 64 cm (26 in × 23 in)
Location| National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Odalisque With Raised Arms is a painting by Henri Matisse, completed in 1923. The oil on canvas measuring 23 by 26 inches is held in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C. Matisse's style changed and evolved drastically throughout his career, including his wide and varying collection of paintings depicting female nudes. His odalisque paintings were inspired by his trip to Morocco. Many of the female subjects in the Odalisque paintings were modeled after Matisse's main model at the time, Henriette Darricarrère.

## Composition

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The subject of the painting is a woman sitting in a green and yellow striped armchair. Her figure and the chair take up the majority of the canvas. She is nude except for sheer, gold-trimmed harem pants that covers her legs and touches the floor. The woman is heavily sexualized by her suggestive pose and how Matisse portrays the curvature of her body. Her breasts are round and idealized. The brushwork in the painting is loose and shows the gestural movements of the artist.

The painting has very little spatial depth, forcing the viewer to confront the woman in the foreground. The architectural and decorative elements further focus the viewer on the seated female. The shadows and curvature of her body is accentuated in contrast with the flat rendering of patterns in the planes behind her. The red decorative element, possibly a tapestry or a painting, hanging on the wall and the striped armchair that she is sitting in offer movement to the viewer's eye.

## Matisse's sources

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This painting is in dialogue with the tradition of the reclining female nude. The history of the depicting the nude female figure is far too vast to contrast Odalisque with Raised Arms with every painting of a nude woman. It is notable that modern painting was especially interested in straying from convention, and teachings from academic art. This slight rebellion can be seen in the manner in which Matisse paints his subject. She is only semi-reclined, her eyes are open, and though she is not engaging with the viewer by eye contact she seems to exude a level of awareness. Her attitude is reminiscent of Édouard Manet's Olympia. The gaze of the prostitute in the painting prevents easy contemplation of her body, she is guarded, she is challenging you, and she is dominating the relationship between the viewer and herself, with her as the object being viewed.[1]

## Matisse's model

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Matisse's model for many of his paintings including Odalisque with Raised Arms is Henriette Darricarrière. Darricarrière was born in 1901, she studied ballet, violin, piano, and painting. She sat for Matisse from 1920 to 1927.[2]

## Morocco and the Odalisques

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Matisse was inspired to paint his Odalisque's by his trip to Morocco in 1912, he argues for the legitimacy of the subject by stating “I do Odalisques in order to do nudes. But, how does one do a nude without being artificial? And then I do them because I know they exist. I was in Morocco, I have seen them.”[3] The word “odalisque” is derived from the Turkish word Odalik, which means chambermaid or female harem slave. Matisse would recreate the Moorish interior that he experienced on his trip by decorating parts of his studio with his collections of “oriental” objects such as tapestries, mirrors, ornate screens, decorative wall hangings, and elaborate costumes.[4]

## Fauvism

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Matisse created many Odalisque paintings in the nineteen-twenties, when Henriette Darricarrière was his main model, and when he was still working loosely under the style of fauvism. Fauvism in painting is characterized by the isolation of individual brush strokes on the canvas and coloristic freedom that moves away from naturalistic representation.[5] The repetition of the Odalisque as the subject was in a way a medium for Matisse to work through and explore his artistic purposes.[6]

## See also

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* List of works by Henri Matisse

## Notes

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1. ^ Dolores Mitchell, "Manet's "Olympia": If Looks could Kill." Source: Notes in the History of Art 13, no. 3 (1994): 39.
2. ^ Jane Aldin, Twentieth Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 56, no. 2 (1998): 62.
3. ^ Jack Flam, Matisse on Art, (London, 1995), 86.
4. ^ Judith Wilkinson, Reclining Nude 1924, Tate
5. ^ Charles W. Millard, Fauvism, The Hudson Review 29, no. 4 (1976): 578.
6. ^ John Elderfield, Pleasuring Painting : Matisse's Feminine Representations, New York, N.Y: Thames and Hudson, 1996, 40.

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Henri Matisse

Works|

| 1890s–1900s|

* Woman Reading (1894)
* Landscape, the Pink Wall (1898)
* Academy Study of a Man (1900-1901)
* A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the Late Afternoon (1902)
* Luxury, Calm and Pleasure (1904)
* The Green Stripe (1905)
* The Open Window (1905)
* Woman with a Hat (1905)
* View of Collioure (1905)
* Landscape at Collioure (1905)
* The Red Carpets (1906)
* Le bonheur de vivre (1906)
* Marguerite Reading (1906)
* The Young Sailor II (1906)
* Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt (1906)
* Madras Rouge (1907)
* Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra) (1907)
* The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1908)
* Game of Bowls (1908)
* Bathers with a Turtle (1908)
* Portrait of Greta Moll (1908)
* Seated Nude (1909)

|

1910s–1920s|

* Dance (1910)
* Music (1910)
* Still Life with Geraniums (1910)
* Interior with Aubergines (1911)
* The Red Studio (1911)
* The Conversation (1908–1912)
* Goldfish (1912)
* The Little Mulatta (1912)
* View over the Bay of Tangier (1912)
* Zorah on the Terrace (1912)
* Window at Tangier (1912)
* Paysage marocain (Acanthes) (1912)
* Seated Riffian (1912)
* Arab Coffeehouse (1912–1913)
* View of Notre-Dame (1914)
* Woman on a High Stool (1914)
* The Yellow Curtain (1915)
* Bathers by a River (1917)
* The Painter and His Model (1917)
* The Music Lesson (1917)
* The Piano Lesson (1918)
* Odalisque with Raised Arms (1923)
* Yellow Odalisque (1926)

1930s–1950s|

* The Dance II (1932)
* Purple Robe and Anemones (1937)
* Woman in a Purple Coat (1937)
* La Blouse Roumaine (1940)
* Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones (1944)
* Young Woman Lying on a White Fur (1944)
* Asia (1946)
* Young Woman in White on a Red Background (1946)
* The Knife Thrower (1947)
* Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (1947)
* The Plum Blossoms (1948)
* Beasts of the Sea (1950)
* The Sorrows of the King (1952)
* Black Leaf on Green Background (1952)
* La Négresse (1952)
* The Snail (1953)
* The Boat (1953)

Series|

* The Back Series (1909–1930)
* Goldfish paintings and etchings (1912–1929)
* Blue Nudes (1952)

Chapels|

* Chapel of the Rosary

Art books|

* Jazz (1947 book)

People|

* Pierre Matisse (son)
* Paul Matisse (grandson)
* Sophie Matisse (great-granddaughter)
* Lydia Delectorskaya (model)
* Gustave Moreau (teacher)

Museums|

* Matisse Museum (Le Cateau-Cambrésis)
* Musée Matisse (Nice)

Related|

* Fauvism
* An Essay on Matisse (1996 documentary)
* Matisse (crater)

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