Henri Matisse’s career is, in many ways, defined by his intense commitment to color and its expressive potential, from his early days as the leader or “king” of the Fauves in the early 20th century through his vivid late cut-outs at the end of his career.  By 1944, when Matisse painted Nature morte aux mimosas sur fond noir [Still Life with Mimosas on Black Background], the master was living and working in Vence in the South of France; he had gone to Nice at the outbreak of World War II, but air raids forced his retreat to the countryside, where he remained until 1949. Matisse’s wartime circumstances were further complicated from surgery he had undergone in 1941, which resulted in complications that permanently limited his mobility.

Matisse had persevered with his art in the face of these difficulties, and in the mid-1940s he began a series of vivid and expressive still lifes in which jewel-like tones are heightened by expanses of velvety black and dark hues. In Nature morte aux mimosas sur fond noir [Still Life with Mimosas on Black Background], Matisse employs vivid hues to heighten the expressive qualities of his composition, depicting radically simplified forms through flattened planes of color. Dramatically set against a black backdrop—a patterned tablecloth incised with a decorative pattern of twisting vines and white leaves—vivid lemons and mimosa flowers dance across the compressed space of the composition. Integral to his mastery of color, Matisse’s use of black as a means to accent and highlight passages of color adds a sense of boldness and intensity to his work, enabling his brilliant colors to shine.

When Matisse visited the Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1917, Renoir conceded Matisse’s strength as a painter by acknowledging his masterful use of the color black. As Renoir confessed to Matisse, “In all truthfulness, I don’t like what you do. I’d almost like to say that you are not a good painter, or even that you are a very bad painter. But one thing prevents me from doing this: When you put black on the canvas it stays in its plane… It is a tint I have banished from my palette … You introduce black and it holds. So, in spite of my feelings, I think you are most surely a painter.”