The Blue Nude, 1907

Matisse was working on a sculpture, Reclining Nude I, when he accidentally damaged the piece. Before repairing it, he painted it in blue against a background of palm fronds. The nude is hard and angular, both a tribute to Cézanne and to the sculpture Matisse saw in Algeria. She is also a deliberate response to nudes seen in the Paris Salon - ugly and hard rather than soft and pretty. This was the last Matisse painting bought by Leo and Gertrude Stein. Blue Nude is of a woman laying nude with one leg over the other and arm bent against her head. The strokes that were used while painting this piece were somewhat sketch like and you can see the process of applying paint to the canvas through this. Some of the most noticeable places that you can see this type of application is the shading on the inner side of her left breast and the dark lines around her thighs and face. This is a feature that falls into the category of avant-garde because it goes against the smooth soft lines that the aca