''The Green Stripe'' (''La Raie Verte''), also known as ''Portrait of Madame Matisse. The Green Line'', is a portrait by

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

of his wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre. It is an oil painting on canvas, completed autumn or winter 1905. It is named for the green band that divides the face in half, by which Matisse sought to produce a sense of light, shadow, and volume without using traditional shading. Matisse's colorism was shocking at the time. When the painting was exhibited in Paris in 1906 such works were being derisively labeled as the creations of

Les Fauves Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' (French language, French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the Representation (arts), repr ...

(the wild beasts), along with similar works of

André Derain André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. Biography Early years Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. I ...

and

Maurice de Vlaminck Maurice de Vlaminck (4 April 1876 – 11 October 1958) was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse, he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 w ...

.Statens Museum for Kunst
Henri Matisse, Portrait of Madame Matisse. The Green Line, 1905 Both admirers and critics of Matisse have characterized ''The Green Stripe'' as a disturbing image: a friend of the painting's owners Michael and

Sarah Stein Sarah Stein (née Samuels) (July 26, 1870 – 1953) was an American art collector. With her husband Michael Stein, the older brother of Leo Stein and Gertrude Stein, she lived in Paris from 1903 to 1935. She supported and popularized the painter ...

called it "a demented caricature of a portrait", and in 1910 the critic

Gelett Burgess Frank Gelett Burgess (January 30, 1866 – September 18, 1951) was an American artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist. An important figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance of the 1890s, particularly through his iconoclast ...

wrote that ''The Green Stripe'' was Matisse's "punishment" of Amélie that compelled the viewer "to see in her a strange and terrible aspect."Klein, John (2001)
''Matisse Portraits''
Yale University Press. p. 81. . The art historian John Klein has suggested that difficulties in the Matisses' marriage may have contributed to the portrait's impersonal and mask-like character. The painting is in

Statens Museum for Kunst The National Gallery of Denmark ( da, Statens Museum for Kunst, also known as "SMK", literally State Museum for Art) is the Danish national gallery, located in the centre of Copenhagen. The museum collects, registers, maintains, researches and han ...

in Copenhagen, Denmark.

References

Paintings by Henri Matisse Post-impressionist paintings 1905 paintings Paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark 20th-century paintings in Denmark Portraits of women Fauvism {{20C-painting-stub