Océanie - La Mer (Oceania - The Sea)

It was Matisse's memories of the golden light (and sand) and the “enchantments” of the sea and the sky he had experienced during his visit to Tahiti in 1930. As he stated: “This panel, printed on linen—white for the motifs and beige for the background—forms, together with a second panel, a wall tapestry composed during reveries that came fifteen years after a voyage to Oceania.From the first, the enchantments of the sky there, the sea, the fish, and the coral in the lagoons plunged me into the inaction of total ecstasy. The local tones of things hadn’t changed, but their effect in the light of the Pacific gave me the same feeling as I had when I looked into a large golden chalice. With my eyes wide open I absorbed everything as a sponge absorbs liquid. It is only now that these wonders have returned to me, with tenderness and clarity, and have permitted me, with protracted pleasure, to execute these two panels.” (Henri Matisse, “Oceanie, tenture murale,” Labyrinthe 2, no. 3 (Dec. 1946): 22–23, translated in Deparpe, “Matisse,” 71, n.41.; after Daniel Walker 2019, cat. 58).