M. Henri Matisse
I suppose it is natural that the landscapes of M. Matisse should have a stronger appeal to me than his other works in the Leicester Galleries. Yet, apart from any purely egotistical considerations, I think many people will agree that his landscapes play a very important, if not the most important, part in the success of his exhibition. In many of them there seems to be no striving for the accomplishment of a unique or startling design, but there is a depth of feeling in their form and a mystery in their colour that alone accounts sufficiently for Matisse's reputation in modern art. I am extremely covetous of any one or all of these pictures. Matisse, in his landscapes, is a poet as well as a painter: his intense feeling for the quiet and rather awe-inspiring moments in Nature, his rendering of the vague profusion of growth, the cool grey horizontal clouds and subtle effects of light, make him a master in this branch of his art. I do not find this intensity of feeling in his other works, they are apt to cool one's ardour after the landscapes, and we are brought to think of design per se, and confronted with a flatness of handling that is not nearly so intriguing. His largest painting, Portrait de Femmes (trois sœurs), is very noble, and the drawings should not fail to satisfy the diminishing (I hope) body of people who will sniff at such an exhibition and utter those well-worn and unpardonable remarks on lack of draughtsmanship. Messrs. Brown and Phillips are to be congratulated on procuring for us such an interesting exhibition, and for giving us in the catalogue a photograph of M. Matisse. A glance at this likeness might still the outcries of Philistia more effectually than much argument.