The Roofs of Collioure
The pink and ochre rooftops of Collioure against the Mediterranean hills — Matisse's Fauve summer, seen from above.
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 Roofs of Collioure — at a glance
- Artist
- Henri Matisse (1869–1954)
- Year
- 1905
- Movement
- Fauvism
- Place
- Collioure, Côte Vermeille, southern France
- Viewpoint
- Looking down over the town roofs to the hills — town and roofscape largely unchanged; colour invented
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 59 × 73 cm
- Now at
- Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Overview
The Roofs of Collioure is one of the canvases Henri Matisse painted in the summer of 1905 at Collioure, the summer that produced Fauvism. From a height, it looks down over the close-packed roofs of the town — orange, pink and violet tiles — with trees, walls and the wooded hills of the Massif des Maures behind, all laid in flat, bright, unmixed colour with bare canvas showing between the strokes. It is oil on canvas, about 59 by 73 cm, and it hangs in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Where was The Roofs of Collioure painted?
Scholarship Collioure is a small anchovy-fishing port on the Côte Vermeille, in Roussillon near the Spanish border, a town of pink and ochre houses around a bay below wooded hills, with a bell tower on the water and a castle. Matisse and André Derain spent the summer of 1905 there. The town and its roofscape are largely unchanged and Collioure now markets a ‘Fauvist trail’; the view over the roofs to the hills can be matched, though Matisse's colour is invented.
What is in the painting?
A jumble of low roofs seen from above fills the lower half — tiles in orange, rose, red and violet, with white walls and dark windows between. Trees and a garden wall rise among them; behind, the green-and-blue hills and a strip of sky. Everything is painted in separate flat patches of high colour, the canvas often left bare at the edges of forms.
Look closely
The mosaic of roofs
Low tiled roofs seen from above read as an almost abstract patchwork of orange, rose, red and violet.
The bare canvas
Unpainted canvas is left showing between many of the coloured strokes.
The green hills
The wooded slopes of the Massif des Maures close the view behind the town.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A steep downward view over packed roofs, built from flat patches of non-naturalistic colour with bare canvas between.
Scholarship Matisse looks down so the roofs read as an almost abstract mosaic of coloured shapes, and chooses hues for force and contrast rather than accuracy — violet and rose roofs, green hills. Unpainted canvas between the strokes keeps the surface light and open.
History & provenance
The painting was bought by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin and, after the Revolution, entered the state museums; it is in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.
Sources
- State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg — collection entry for Henri Matisse, ‘The Roofs of Collioure’ (1905)
- Ville de Collioure — the ‘chemin du fauvisme’
Related paintings
The Open Window
1905
Matisse's Collioure window of the same summer — the harbour instead of the roofs.
Vue de toits
1878
Caillebotte's grey Paris roofscape — the same downward roof view, in a wholly different key.
Luxe, Calme et Volupté
1904
Matisse's Saint-Tropez picture of 1904 — the Neo-Impressionist dot method he had just dropped for this.
More by Henri Matisse
Luxe, Calme et Volupté
Notre-Dame, one late afternoon
Also connected to Collioure