Daisies

Daisies — Henri Matisse. 1939.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 92 × 65 cm (36 3/16 × 25 5/8 in.).

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

Henri Matisse titled this composition after the prominent vase of flowers on a tabletop. The large fields of unmodulated black, blue, and red reflect the artist’s growing interest in abstraction and a formal effect that he termed “ballast,” a synonym for stability. Painted only months before France declared war on Germany, Daisies was first owned by the influential modern art dealer Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959). Within a year of purchasing the painting, Rosenberg, among other Jewish dealers, was targeted by the Nazis and was forced to flee France. Daisies was seized along with the majority of Rosenberg’s collection. Only after the war ended and a portion of these works were recuperated by the US Army was Rosenberg able to reclaim some of his collection, including this piece, which he brought to his newly founded gallery in New York.

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.