Name 3simplicity of an African ritual mask. The gaze of the black deformed eyes is directed into the distance or deeply inside of herself. The strange asymmetry of her eyes hints to some painful disharmony in her soul. The sharp geometry of the eyes, nose, mouth, and the unrefined ear iscontrasted with a more rounded outline of her broad body that leans forward. The bulkiness of her silhouette is emphasized with a loose coat and the large hands that rest heavily on the folds of her baggy skirt.
The face is large, rigorous and still, whereas the body and the hands suggest a readiness to move. The face, the hands, and the scarf stand out with their light colorand create a certain spatial tension. A warm blurred russet background somehow animates theasymmetry of the figure and makes it volumetric. The perspective of the corner adds to that perception. Stein’s existence in the portrait is very active and convincing, and it delivers the energy that she must have delivered personally.
With this portrait, Picasso relieved himself from the bounds of traditional portraiture and relieved Stein from the traditional norms and bounds of female beauty. He showed her essence and her path and proved how sharply and deeply he was able to see through the eyes of his imagination, much better than when he faced the pictured object. As Stein wrote about Picasso’s work on her portrait, “… he commenced to paint figures in colors that were almost monotone, still a little rose but mostly an earth color, the lines of the bodies harder, with a great deal of force there was the beginning of his own vision.
It was like the blue period but much more felt and less colored and less sentimental. His art commenced to be much purer” (21). 2 Stein saw the essence of Picasso’s talent and was the key personality who influenced his career, and with this portrait, he seems to have succeeded to deliver the essence of her visionary and influential personality. He reached the essence of Stein, valued her past and foreknew her future. Henri Matisse created his Young Sailor II the same year as Picasso finished his Gertrude Stein, 1906.
It was the beginning of the formation of Matisse’s style that later would2 See Stein, especially 18-25, for more of her discussion of the evolution of Picasso’s style and the beginning of Cubism. Name 4be called Fauvism, which means “wild”. Having painted the two versions of the young fisherman’s portrait, Matisse proved that reducing the image to a primitive form, leaving minimum elements which are exaggerated and vividly colored, can express the energy of the portrait better than the natural likeness. In Young Sailor II, we do not see any realistic interpretation of the model.
There is no precise proportion and no exquisite face study. The contours of the body are rounded, the color planes are flattened, and the most attention is concentrated on the face, with the emphasis put on the exaggeratedly open eyes and thin chin. The young man has, as we may guess from the title of the painting, the typical fisherman’s attire. The blue and green cap resonates with the blue sweater and green pants, and these colors allude to the colors of the sea as we may see it at different depths and in a different light.
The clothes sit loosely on the sailor, the contours of his body are roughly rounded, and the brushstrokes are exuberant. The checkered white-and-green socks peep out from the red-and-white boots with red laces. His hands are large, and his face is broad and mask-like, with enlarged eyes that look seriously straight at us. The ear is red, untreated and large. The brown chair he sits on looks deformed. The sailor seems static and flat, despite the folds on his clothes, due to the empty pink background. Combining the contrasting colors, Matisse reached the harmony of the dissonance.
The expression of the light and free spirit of the painting is delivered by each element – the space that the object occupies, the background, the proportion. With its flatness, simplified form, and colorfulness, the portrait gives the impression of a child’s drawing. Vivid colors and their “wild” combination are characteristic of the Fauvism style. As Matisse,himself wrote, “I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture” (4). 3 The realism has been sacrificed for the sake of delivering the reality and sensation as the artist felt it.
As we can see from the discussed examples, all the three artists regarded portrait as a means to deliver the essence of the subject rather than the naturalistic likeness of the 3 See Matisse, especially 4-5, for the explanation of his choice of colors. Name 5portrayed person. In Van Gogh’s case, this essence lies in the soothing effect, in Picasso’s it isstrong, bold and influential Stein’s personality, and in Matisse’s case it is the mood of gaiety, openness, and decorative quality. The simplified, distorted forms, loose, rounded lines of the bodies, sometimes exuberant brushwork are common for the three portraits.
They also share the primitive, rough features of the faces of portrayed subjects – in the case of Madame Roulin, these features allude to folklore, and in the cases of Gertrude Stein and Matisse’s sailor – to the African masks. All the three artists in these portraits use the background to emphasize the character of a portrayed body: Van Gogh’s ornamental background enhances the feeling of warmth and comfort that Madame Roulin brings; Picasso’s blurred background with the corner adds volume to Stein’s body; and Matisse’s plain pink background flattens theportrayed figure.