The Piano Lesson

Henri Matisse, 1916 · Gallery 506 · Floor 5

This one, you need the year. It's 1916. France is deep in the war. Matisse tried to enlist when it started. Even bought the boots. They turned him down. Twice. Too old, they said. Forty-four. And a weak heart. His mother's alone in the occupied north. His brother's in a prison camp in Germany. His two boys are getting close to military age. And he's at home. Painting his sixteen-year-old son, Pierre, at the piano. It's eight feet tall. That's a lot of canvas for piano practice. Now look at how much room there is around him. All that grey. And Pierre's little head down on the right, just clearing the music. One eye looking out. The other disappears into that dark triangle cutting across his face. Up above him, another figure sits bolt upright. Hands in her lap. No face at all. She looks like she's making sure he practices. And down in the opposite corner, a little bronze-colored sculpture. Another seated woman, all curves and elbows. So he's got company. Nobody's saying much. On the left, a long wedge of green. The garden, squeezed into a triangle. Below it, the iron railing curls around. Those curves turn up again on the music stand. Little bits of decoration in this very severe room. Then that great pink piano cuts across the bottom. And behind it, the boy. We're getting into Picasso territory here. Flat planes, hard edges. Matisse took what he wanted from Cubism and never really joined the club. And here he is, using it on his own kid. A kid practicing piano. An ordinary afternoon. So why does it feel like this? You can't know how much of the war got into the picture. But once you know what's happening to his family, that grey starts to feel different. Look at the metronome on the piano. The little thing that ticks to keep you in time. Another triangle. Like the wedge over his eye. The boy has to keep up with it. And you can almost hear it, in all that grey. Tick. Tick. Tick. The next summer, Matisse writes to his painter friend Camoin. "Something important has happened in my house." "Jean, my eldest, has left to join the regiment at Dijon."

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