Apples

Apples — Henri Matisse. 1916.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 116.5 × 89.5 cm (45 7/8 × 35 3/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

When the 45-year-old Henri Matisse was rejected from military service at the outbreak of World War I, a friend encouraged him to contribute to the war effort the best way he could: by continuing to paint well. This led to a productive period of compositional and material experimentation that Matisse hoped would sustain the tradition of French painting in the face of a cultural and national threat. Matisse painted this still-life composition twice—in the abstract work seen here and also in a more traditionally representational version. A hidden light source bathes the scene in warm tones, which are offset by a swath of green. Luminous black consumes the background, reflecting Matisse’s challenge to himself to use black as a “color of light, not darkness.”

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.