L'automne à Cagnes

One moody day in the fall of 1918, Matisse began to paint a sweeping, polychromatic view from atop a hill in Cagnes in the South of France, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The artist observed a thick swarm of gray and moss-green clouds descending upon the town, obscuring the peach-colored sky. The clouds are heavy and low lying, suggesting that a rain storm is imminent. The plot of land on this charming hilltop is defined by a grove of young trees, two large sand-colored cisterns, and three towering emerald trees, all surrounded by bright green grass. The painting is defined as much by its vivid, atmospheric color as its compositional simplicity. While some of the landscapes that Matisse painted during this period - for example, the Museum of Modern Art in New York's Paysage - depict winding paths and towering trees, L'automne à Cagnes is unique for its depiction of both cultivated land and natural seascape within the same vista.
Between 1917 and 1918, forty-eight-year-old Matisse lived and worked in the city of Nice. While in residence there, he took regular trips to Cagnes to paint the agrarian landscape as the weather and seasons changed - and to visit the seventy-seven-year-old painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who had retired to a farmhouse there the decade prior. Like Renoir, Matisse was attracted to the lush foliage and brilliant color of the Mediterranean landscape. Unlike his Impressionist predecessor, however, Matisse's work of this period was characterized by flat swathes of pure pigment rendered with broad, gesturing brushwork rather than layered, flickering strokes of variegated color.