The Open Window
The view from Matisse's window at Collioure — fishing boats in the little harbour, painted in the hot colour that named Fauvism.
Collioure
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
The Open Window — at a glance
- Artist
- Henri Matisse (1869–1954)
- Year
- 1905
- Movement
- Fauvism
- Place
- Collioure, Côte Vermeille, southern France
- Viewpoint
- A window onto the fishing harbour — town and bay largely unchanged
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 55 × 46 cm
- Now at
- National Gallery of Art, Washington
Overview
The Open Window, Collioure is one of the small canvases Henri Matisse painted in the summer of 1905 that, shown that autumn at the Salon d'Automne, led a critic to call the room of such pictures a ‘cage of wild beasts’ (fauves). It looks out through a pair of open casement windows and a balcony rail to a harbour of masted boats and a violet-and-pink sea and sky. It is oil on canvas, about 55 by 46 cm, and it hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The story behind the painting
Scholarship Matisse spent that summer at Collioure with André Derain, the two of them pushing colour past anything in Impressionism — laying it on in flat, unmixed, often ‘wrong’ hues straight from the tube. This window view of the harbour, done from the room where he was staying, is the best-known result and one of the founding images of twentieth-century colour painting.
Where was The Open Window painted?
Scholarship Collioure is a small port on the Côte Vermeille, in Roussillon, close to the Spanish frontier — a town of pink and ochre houses around a bay, with a bell tower on the water and the Pyrenees behind. It was a working anchovy-fishing port with characteristic Catalan boats (barques catalanes). The town and its harbour are largely unchanged and Collioure now markets its ‘Fauvist trail’; Matisse's window looked onto the port, though the picture is about colour, not a precise survey of the view.
What is in the painting?
The frame of the window fills the canvas: two open casements with panes reflecting pink and green, a wall on each side, a sill with pots of climbing plants, and a balcony rail. Through the opening, small sailing boats with furled sails ride on water painted in strokes of turquoise, rose and green, under a loosely brushed pink-and-blue sky. Everything — walls, frames, foliage, sea — is a patchwork of bright, separate colours.
Look closely
The Catalan boats
Small sailing craft with furled sails ride in the harbour beyond the window — the barques catalanes of the anchovy fishery.
The green-and-pink wall
The interior wall to the left is painted green and rose; the right wall red and pink — no single consistent light.
The potted plants on the sill
Climbing greenery in pots sits on the windowsill and along the balcony rail.
The bare canvas
Matisse leaves patches of unpainted canvas showing between the dabs of colour.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A window within the picture: bands of wall and casement frame a small bright rectangle of harbour and sky.
Scholarship Matisse uses the window as a frame-within-the-frame, dividing the canvas into zones — left wall, right wall, the glazed casements, the open view — and gives each its own key of colour rather than a single consistent light. The paint is applied in short, visible dabs and flat patches, with bare canvas left showing.
Colour and light
Non-naturalistic colour throughout: red and green walls, pink and turquoise sea, orange and blue reflections.
Scholarship The colours are chosen for their force and their contrast, not to describe how the harbour actually looked: the left wall is green and pink, the right wall red and pink, the sea rose and jade. This freeing of colour from description is what made the picture a scandal in 1905 and a foundation stone afterwards.
Meaning and interpretation
Interpretations differ. What the artist documented, what museums and scholars propose, and later or speculative theories are marked and kept separate.
Colour set free
The picture is read as the moment colour became fully independent in Western painting — used for its own expressive and structural power rather than to imitate appearances. The open window looking to bright water became a lifelong Matisse motif.
The birth of ‘Fauvism’
At the 1905 Salon d'Automne the critic Louis Vauxcelles described the room of such canvases with a jibe about ‘Donatello among the wild beasts’, and the name ‘les Fauves’ stuck to Matisse, Derain and their circle.
History & provenance
The painting was owned by John Hay Whitney and given, through the Whitney collection, to the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Sources
- National Gallery of Art, Washington — collection entry for Henri Matisse, ‘The Open Window, Collioure’ (1905; oil on canvas, c. 55 × 46 cm)
- Ville de Collioure — the ‘chemin du fauvisme’ (Fauvist trail)
Frequently asked
What is the view in The Open Window?
The harbour of Collioure, a small fishing port on the French Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border, seen through the open casement windows of the room where Matisse was staying in the summer of 1905.
Can you visit Collioure?
Yes. The town and its bay of pink and ochre houses, with the bell tower on the water, are largely unchanged, and Collioure now promotes a ‘Fauvist trail’ marking spots Matisse and Derain painted.
Why are the colours so unrealistic?
Matisse chose colours for their strength and contrast rather than to match the real scene — green and red walls, a rose-and-turquoise sea. Freeing colour from description in this way is what the painting is famous for.
How is it connected to the word ‘Fauvism’?
It was in the room at the 1905 Salon d'Automne that a critic mocked as a ‘cage of wild beasts’ (fauves); the name stuck to Matisse, Derain and their circle.
Where is the painting now?
In the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Whitney collection).
Related paintings
More by Henri Matisse
Luxe, Calme et Volupté
Notre-Dame, one late afternoon
Also connected to Collioure