Photo By Gail

In Nude in a Wood (1906), which was made near the town of Collioure in the French Mediterranean, Henri Matisse uses broad patches of vivid pigment to integrate a figure of his wife in a lush landscape. Although his techniques were new, his subject matter – the female nude in, and acquainted with, nature – refers directly to the pastoral landscape tradition and it’s imagined worlds of timeless pleasure in harmony. This painting was included in the 1913 Armory Show, a groundbreaking exhibition that introduced US audiences to European modernism.

Photographed in The Brooklyn Museum.