by Claire Papon
Henri Matisse (1869-1954), La Villa bleue à Nice (The Villa Blue in Nice), 1918, oil on canvas, 54 x 65.4 cm/21.26 x 25.74 in. © SUCCESSION H. MATISSE Estimate: €150,000/200,000
Matisse painted this landscape featuring a blue villa shortly after moving to Nice in 1917. The artist resided at the Beau Rivage Hotel on the Promenade des Anglais before renting an apartment in the building next door that he converted into a studio, where he painted his first brightly colored interiors and the view from his windows overlooking the sea. Light was not a revelation. It had already captured Matisse’s attention in Saint-Tropez in 1904, in Collioure the following year and in Morocco; but in Nice, he turned the rules of painting upside-down. "When I realized I would see this light every morning,” he wrote in May 1918, “I felt so unbelievingly happy. I decided not to leave Nice, and stayed there practically all my life." Click here to read more