Henri Matisse painting transitions from rejection to Modern art masterpiece

Henri Matisse painted The Red Studio in 1911 while working in his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.

The artist used an unorthodox amount of deep red to cover two-thirds of the canvas. This choice led to the painting being rejected by his loyal patron Sergei Shchukin. The work also failed to gain traction when it was displayed in London and later at the 1913 Armory Show in the United States.

The painting eventually made its Paris debut in 1926 as public tastes began to align with Matisse's artistic instincts. A year later, the owner of the Gargoyle Club in London purchased the work. The painting hung in the club for more than a decade before it eventually moved to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Modern artists such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly were influenced by the work during the postwar period.

Museum of Modern Art curator Ann Temkin describes the piece as a large expanse of color that exists for its own expressive purposes rather than to describe a specific subject.