The Dance are two related paintings made by Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

 between 1909 and 1910. The first, preliminary version is Matisse's study for the second version. The composition or arrangement of dancing figures is reminiscent of Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

's watercolour "Oberon, Titania and Puck with fairies dancing" from 1786.

Dance (I)

In March 1909 Matisse painted a preliminary version of this work, known as Dance (I) It was compositional study and uses paler colors and less detail. The painting was highly regarded by the artist who once called it "the overpowering climax of luminosity"; it is also featured in the background of Matisse's La Danse with Nasturtiums (1912).

It was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller in honor of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. to the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 in New York.

Dance

Dance, is a large decorative panel, painted with a companion piece, Music

Music (Matisse)

Music is a painting made by Henri Matisse in 1910. The painting was commissioned by Sergei Shchukin, who hung it with Dance on the staircase of his Moscow mansion. Matisse made the painting without any preparatory sketches, and thus the painting bears many traces of modifications. One can...

, specifically for the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin

Sergei Shchukin

Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, following a trip to Paris in 1897, when he bought his first Monet. He later bought numerous works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, among...

, with whom Matisse had a long association. Until the October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 of 1917, this painting hung together with Music on the staircase of Shchukin's Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 mansion.

The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist

Fauvism

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...

 color palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism

Hedonism

Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....

. The painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

's famous musical work The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...

.

Dance is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting". It generally resides in the Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

 in St. Petersburg, but was loaned to Hermitage Amsterdam

Hermitage Amsterdam

Hermitage Amsterdam is a dependency of the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg on the Amstel river in Amsterdam. The dependency is located at the former Amstelhof, a classical style building from 1681. The dependency has been displaying small exhibitions in a side building next to the Amstelhof...

for a period of six weeks from April 1 to May 9, 2010.

External links

• Two versions of The Dance