''Music'' (''La Musique'') is a wall-size painting made 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 drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...

in 1910. The painting was commissioned by

Sergei Shchukin Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (russian: Серге́й Ива́нович Щу́кин; 10 January 1936) was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Early life and family Sergei ...

, who hung it with Matisse's 1910 '' 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 virtually trace the steps Matisse took to find the intended effect. As in ''Dance'', the aim was to show man's attainment of a state of completeness by immersion in creativity. The painting is now in the collection of the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

.State Hermitage Museum
Music
/ref>

References

1910 paintings Paintings by Henri Matisse Paintings in the collection of the Hermitage Museum Musical instruments in art {{20C-painting-stub