In the summer of 1912, Matisse created this picture at his studio at Issy-les- Moulineaux in the suburbs of Paris. This work is one half of a pair of which the second is called Corner ofthe Studio. This pair of pictures, together with a third "pink" painting called The Painters Studio, form a triptych that decorated S. Shchukin's mansion in Moscow. Shchukin had commissioned Matisse to produce them. All three canvases are now in the Pushkin Museum. From Shchukin's letter to Matisse of August 22, 1912, it is clear that the collector agreed to include Nasturtiums with "La Danse" in the Autumn Salon of that year and brought the painting from Moscow to Paris for this purpose. At the same time Matisse painted Shchukin's picture, he also painted another version which now belongs to the Worcester Museum of Art (Massachusetts, USA). This second version differs from the Pushkin Mu- seum painting in its composition. For example, the diagonal line of the floor is straightened and the massive jar with flowers is depicted in a more plastic manner, while in the Pushkin Museum version the jar mingles with the background and the dancing figures look three-dimensional. This play of realistic objects that seem to melt into their background of protruding ornaments gives the Pushkin Museum canvas special sophistication. Nastur- tiums with "La Danse" depicts a fragment of the painting called La Danse (1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York). The dance motif was introduced for the first time by Matisse in his famous picture La Joie de Vivre (Barnes Foundation, USA), while another painting titled La Danse, a major canvas dedicated to this subject, was also painted on Shchukin's order and is now in the Hermitage Museum, Russia.

Signed, bottom right: Henri Matisse

Pushkin Museum, inv. no. 3301

Provenance:

1912, S. Shchukin collection, Moscow;

1918, First Museum of Modern Western Painting, Moscow;

1923, Museum of Modern Western Art, Moscow;

since 1948, Pushkin Museum, Moscow.