Henri Matisse

Sources: MoMA: Landscape at Collioure, The Met: Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore, SFMOMA: Marine (Bord de mer), National Gallery of Art: Lorette with Turban, Yellow Jacket, The Met: Matisse: In Search of True Painting, and MoMA: Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, The Met: Le Luxe II distemper.

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  Oil paint

  For Landscape at Collioure (1905), Matisse brushed oil onto unprimed canvas, sometimes applying paint straight from the tube and leaving bare woven fabric visible between vivid strokes. The later Landscape (1918) is also oil, but on canvas board. Those two supports and their different handling show that his oil practice extended beyond the Fauvist summer.

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  Distemper paint

  Matisse painted Le Luxe II (1907–08) in distemper on canvas, giving its three figures a flat, matte surface unlike his oil paintings. The Met notes that the water-based medium has a fresco-like appearance; the work was painted on canvas, not directly into wet plaster.

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  Watercolor paint

  Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore (1905) is watercolor over charcoal on paper. The quick color passages describe a coastal figure, but this work is a drawing on paper rather than one of Matisse's oil canvases from his Fauvist period.

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  Gouache paint

  For late cut-outs such as The Swimming Pool (1952), studio assistants applied opaque gouache to large sheets of paper in colors chosen by Matisse. He then cut and arranged shapes, often pinning them in place before permanent mounting. The gouache colored the paper; the finished work is a cut-paper composition, not a painted canvas.

Sources: MoMA: oil on unprimed canvas in Landscape at Collioure, MoMA: oil on canvas board in Landscape, The Met: distemper in Le Luxe II, The Met: watercolor in Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore, and MoMA: gouache-painted paper and cut-out process.

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  Canvas

  Matisse painted on canvas throughout his career. MoMA records Landscape at Collioure (1905) on unprimed canvas and The Piano Lesson (1916) as oil on canvas, documenting this support across both his early Fauvist experiments and later, more structured compositions. Collection records specify the support for each painting.

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  Paper

  Matisse used paper for drawings and watercolors as well as designs for his cut-outs. The Met catalogs Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore (1905) as watercolor and charcoal on paper, a small works-on-paper study distinct from the finished oil canvases.

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  Painting Board

  MoMA identifies Landscape (1918) as oil on canvas board. The rigid, prepared support let Matisse make a smaller oil painting without stretched fabric; this museum-documented example is separate from his large canvases and from cardboard-mounted works. The entry records the support explicitly.

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  Cardboard

  The National Gallery of Art catalogs Matisse’s Still Life (c. 1905) as oil on cardboard mounted on wood. Its support combines a painted sheet with a rigid backing, documenting cardboard as the image-bearing surface rather than treating all panel works as painted directly on wood.

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  Wood

  The National Gallery of Art records Matisse’s Lorette with Turban, Yellow Jacket (1917) as oil on wood. This direct panel support differs from the cardboard mounted on wood in his earlier Still Life, showing two distinct ways wood appears in his documented painting supports.

Sources: MoMA: Landscape at Collioure, The Met: Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore, SFMOMA: Marine (Bord de mer), National Gallery of Art: Lorette with Turban, Yellow Jacket, The Met: Matisse: In Search of True Painting.